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GREAT QUESTIONS OF THE TIMES, 



BRIEF REPORT OF PROCEEDmGS 



AT THE GREAT 



I INAUGURAL MASS MEETING 



LOYAL NATIONAL LEAGUE, 

IN 

UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK, 

ON 

THE AXNTVEKSAKY OF 8UMTER, 

APRIL llTii, 1863. 



(A full Report of the Pi'oceedinga, inoludiiig all the speeches, and letters ft-om di; 

linguished citizens in all quarters of the Union, is 

published in another book.) 




NEW YORK: 
PRIXTED FOR THE LOYAL ISTATIOXAL LEAGUE. 



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■,.■ THE GRRAT QUESTIONS OF THE TIMES,.! 
REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS 

AT THE 

■ Great InauguraWassMeeting 

>*► ' OF THE 

LOYAL NATIONAL LEAGUE, 

ON UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK, 

ON 

THE A.NNIVEIlSA.Ry OF SUMTER. 

FEINTED FOR THE LOYAL NATIOBTAL LEAGUE. 



The Samter Rally on the lltb Aprilat Union Square, 
was a triumphant gathering of the loyal people of 
the Empire City. The weather was fine; the con- 
courte imra'ense; the speeches patriotic and eloquent. 
Six stands were erected on the Square for the accom- 
modation of the orators and musicians, and upon 
each of these were flags of stars, with appropriate 
mottoes and devices. The magnificent statue of 
Washington was decorated with a rosette of red, 
white, and blue, with streamers, and trimmed with 
evergreens. The vast assemblage of people pouring 
in from every street at an early hour surged about 
the stands, foyming a sea of upturned faces beaming 
•with patriotic devotion to their country. Many of 
the public buildings and large edifices on Broadway 
and other parts of the city had the National flag 
flying during the day. Capt. Mowbray and Henry 
Brewster each sent a brass piece, from which a sa- 
lute of one hundred and fifty guns was fired. The 
police arrangements, under Inspector Carpenter, 
were all that could be desired, and the utmost order 
was preserved throughout the day. It was a mag- 
nificent mass meeting of the loyal citizens of New- 
York, who, forgetting their party associations and 
political predilections, mude haste to show their al- 
legiance to the flag which had been struck from its 
stafi'by Rebel cannon at Fort Sumter two years sgo. 
We do not disparage the other distinguished gentle- 
men when we say that Gen. Fremont and Gen. Sigel 
were the lions of the day. These men had been 
baptized xvith fire on the field of battle, and had 
shown their patriotism by personal exposure in front 
of the enemy. When ilie speaking commenced. 
Union Squaie presented an imposing and animated 
scene. Here the white locks of Daniel S, Dickmson 
were streaming in the wini, while his pungent sen- 
tences stirred the souls of his auditors with intense 
emotions; there Gov. Morton of Indiana reasoned of 
the righteousness of our cause and the judgment that 
will come upon traitors, while Gens. Fremont and 
Sigel, at different stands, but almost within hearing 
of each otherj moved their bearers with a spirit of 



enthuBii,^m which was expreseed in cheer apom 
cheer an .J sentiments of high commendation. Hand- 
kerchiefi |and flags were waved by the fair hands of 
ladies wfe^ filled the doorways, windows, and balco- 
nies thaij -arder the Square, and the booming cannon 
seemed vvlfive emphasis to the sentiments so spiritr 
ediy appj.aided. The short pauses between the 
speeches v^^re filled with music that chimed harmo- 
niously ■" ith the masterly eloquence of the speakers. 
Allhouf 'i the news from Charleston was not satis- 
factory, .he hope and the faith of the people were 
unshaken, and their dstermination to wipe out the 
Rebellion, at whatever cost of blood and treasure, 
was firm and strong as on the day of the Sumter 
outrage 

sta:v]> ]Vo. 1. 

Speeches of the Hon. Montgomery XCIaiv, 
the Hon. Wm. ». Kelley, and Others. 

Stand No. I was placed immediately in front at 
the statue jf Washington. Long before the com- 
mencement a great mass of people collected beneath 
the inspira Ion of the Father of their Country, and 
befo; m. the auditors at this stand were nam* 

bered c. thousands. A salute was fired by th<s 
workingmui in the employ of Mr. Henry Brewster 
from two <^ pounders. This stand was provided with 
a paraboloid sound-reflector, which throws the voice 
of a speaker much farther than it will otherwise go, 
and renders speaking in the open air comparatively 
easy. This is a contrivance of Col. Grant of cal- 
cium-light celebrity. 

After a grand march from "Le Prophete," by 
Grafulla's Band, Mr. George Griswold called the 
meeting to order, and nominated Mayor Opdyke to 
preside. His nomination was received with enthu- 
siasm. 

On taking the chair, the Mayor made a few 
remarks on the occasion and its memories, which 
were received with great applause. He concluded 
by introducing the hero of the Harriet Lane, Robert 
Cummiugs, tlje brave sailor boy who tired the last 
shots after she had been boarded by the Rebels. Tiia 
Btardy little tar moauted upon a chair, in obedience 
to the calls of the multitude^ and was loudly cheered. 

Mr. Georg£ Griswold then read the addresi of 



the League, prepared by Dr. Lieber. It was re- 
ceived with frequent cheers. 
Mr. S. B. Chittenden proposed the following 

RESOLUTIONS. 
I. Resolved, That, assembled on the anniversary of the 
a?sauU on Sumter, and reviewini the two years lliat have 
since ela[>scd, in the advance whiuti our government has 
made from the position of unexampled weakness to which 
it had been reduced by imbeciiity and treachery, W9 recog- 
nize the wondrous vitality and 8tren.^th of our repn^ican 
institutions, based upon tlie will of an intelligent a 
people. At iheir voice a million of men have sp 
amis. An effective navy has been suddenly creal _^^ 
the monstrous expenses of a mighty war have been pfUKIit- 
ly and cheerfully met without borrowing a dollar from the 
capitalists of Europe, or asking assistance from any nation 
upon earth. 

That ttie feeling of loyal America, in view of all the difii- 
eulties of the case, has deepeneil into the firm and clear con- 
■victlon that the rebellion can be crushed, ought to be crush- 
«<!, and shall be crushed; and that the last Congress, in 
placing at the disposal of the Executive, without stint, the 
men, money, and resources of the nation, was the true ex- 
ponent of tile devotion and loyalty of the American peuple, 
and of thvir unilterablc determination to preserve unim- 
paired the national unity, both in principle and territory, 
against iirmod traitors in the South, their aiders and abettors 
in the North, and their piratical allies in Great Britain. 

II. Resolved., That, apart from the treachery that bus 
larked, and which we fear still lurks, in the civil "and mili- 
tary departments of the government, we believe thatlho 
errors and delays that have hitherto retarded the prosecu- 
tion of tlie war, and the success of our arms have arisen 
from tlip erroneous belief that the rebels have possessed cer- 
Ta'n constitutional rights which the national goyernment 
was bound to resp^ cf. ', 

That the recent decision of the Supreme Court Of the na- 
tion, resolving, by the solemn aojudicaiion of thathign tri- 
buna', to whose judgment the American people are accus- 
tomed to bow, a'l consiitntional doubts as to the character 
of the war in which the nation is engaged, leivef no place 
hereafter for any such mistake on the part of apy officer, 
civil, military, or naval, since the judicial declrirat''ou that 
the territory occupied by the rebels is "enomy'a territory ; 
and all persons re.-iding within this territory, whose property 
may be used to increase the revenues of the hosti'e power, 
are in the oondiiion to be treated as enemies, though not 
foreigners,"' has dffined beyond all question the rights and 
dutv of the government and the people. 

That, in accordance with the principles of that decision, 
now to be recognized as the law of the hmd, the war should 
henceforth be wa^ed with a single a'm to the conquest of 
the rebe lion, witli the lea.st delay "and the smallesc burthen 
to the nation at lai ge, by depriving the enemy of his strength 
and his resources in whatsoever they may consist, by appro- 
priating his property wherever it may be convenient, and 
by withdr.awing from h's support, enroding in our rank'', and 
treating as soliliers of the ivpub'ic, all loyal men to be found 
dn the bouth, without regard to race, creed, or complexion. 

III. Resolved, Tnat when, on ihe day on whose solemn 
anniversary we are gathered togttlier, the rebels of the 
South boasted ihat they had inaugurated war againrt the 
repnbUc, that they had humbUd the staro and stiipes, and 
that their confedt-rate couriterfeit of our flag would soon 
float even over Faneuil Hall, the American people r.iUied in 
defence of that national unity which had been their glory at 
home and their safeguard abroad ; and while they have 
"maintained the ancient honor of tueir flag on many a well- 
contested field, and will maintain it, until it again tloats over 
Sumter, acd wherever it has floated in the past; they, never- 
theless, have recognized, and do now recognize, the fact that 
the rebellion was not organized by the people of the South, 
but by their bad and ambitions leaders, who, armed with the 
muniments of war filched from the national government, pre- 
c p tated ihe revoluiion upon the Southern States. 

That we also recognize the fact that the object of those 
leaders is to establish a midtary or monarchical government, 
sustained by an organized and cemented aristocracy, in 
which 'he principlesof democracy should be utterly ignored, 
its fundamental doctrineof " the greatest good of the greatest 
number" should be di'cirded as a pestilent and pernicious 
dogma, and the rights and happiness of the majority of the 
' citizens be sacrificed to Ihe interests of a few slaveh(dders. 

That we further recognize the fact that, with this intent, 
Slavery was made the "chief corner-stone of the Southern 
■confederacy, and, in the remorseless conscription for tin ir 
army, persons holding twenty slaves are exempt, while the 
non-slaveholders are made to bear the burthen of a war in- 
tended to impoverish .and degrade them. And wo gl.adly 
remember that in the overthrow of that bastard confederacy, 
and the uprooting of its corner-stone, -will be concerned, not 
simply the welfare of the nation at large, but the future 
peace, prosperity, and happiness of the South; that in its 
future results the war for the Union will be one, not of sub- 
jugation, but of deliverance; and that, as regards all classes 
in the rebel States excepting only the leaders of the rebellion, 
onr triumph will be their gain. 



IV. Resolved, That in view of the recent conduct of the 
British government, in permitting a piratical vessel to be 
built, equip[)ed, and manned in British ports, for the use of 
the Southern confederates, and to go forth under the British 
flag, in disregard of the remonstrances of the American 
minister, accompanied by ample proof of the character of 
the vessel, to prey upon American commerce, and plunder 
and burn defenceless merchant ships, receiving the while 
the hospitalities of British colonial ports, it is proper for ns 
to recall to the British government and the British people 
the contrast between such a violation of international neu- 
trality, and the honorable fidelity and promptness which the 
American government, from its foundation, has uniformly 
observed toward the government of Great Britain. 

The example set by Washington in observing, in regard 
to England, the strictest neutrality in her war with France; 
the pe'remptory instruction given by Hamilton, when Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, to the collectors of our ports to exer- 
cise " the greatest vigilance, care, activity, and impartiality, 
in searching for and discovering any attempt to fit out ves- 
sels or expeditions in aid of either party;" the action of our 
Government, on the suggestion of Mr. Hammond, the Brit- 
ish Minister, iu seizing a'vessel that was being fitted out as 
a French privateer; the restoration to the British Govern- 
ment of the British ship " Grange," taken by the French in 
American waters ; the equipment by President Jefferson, in 
180.5, of a force to cruise within our own seas and arrest ves- 
sels embarking in a war in which the country had no part, 
and "bring in the offenders for trial as pirates;" and the 
prompt fidelity with which succeeding Presidtnts have per- , 
formed their duty in this regard, especially toward Great 
Britain, down to its Canadian rebellion in 183S, and its war 
with Russia in 1S.54, the facts of which are fresh in their 
recollection,— complete a record that entitles the American 
Government to the fairest exercise, on the part of England, 
of. the neutrality she professes in the pending war with the 
Southern Confederates. Tnat apart from the fact that the 
aid thus extended in England to tlie Confeilerate cause, 
without interference by the government, in defiance of the 
sentiments of the civilized world, to a pretended govern- 
ment, which boasts as its corner-stone human slavery, it is 
the sentiment of this meeting that the Government of the 
United States should make the most urgent appeal to the 
honor of the British Government, to the justice of the 
British courts, and the moral sense of the British people, to 
provide a remedy for these outrages, and avert the possibil- 
ity of a conflict between two nations who should be united 
by all the ties that spring from a common ancestry and a 
common civilization. 

V. Resolved, That we cannot separate on an occasion 
like the present, when wo ag^iin catch the echoes of cannon 
thundering against Sumter, without recaUing, with swelling 
pride and aft'eciionate regard, our brave army and navy, 
wherever gathered for the deience of the country, and espe- 
cially those that attract the gaze of the world on the Cooper, 
the Kappahannock, and the Mississippi. 

That, to protfct Ihe rights of our gallant defenders is the 
grateful dnty of nil true" Americans; and that we heartily 
approve the judicious Act of our Legislature to secure them 
their privdig^ of a vote, while we leave to the scorn they 
deserve, those men recreant to the first principles of de- 
mocracy, who. ready to abet the enemies of their country, 
even by invoking intervention from a British minister, with 
abase consistency, would wrest from our citizen-suldiers 
the right to pass upon snch disloyal conduct. 

VI. Resolved, That, with the view of advising the Na- 
tional Government of the earnest devotion of the loyal masses 
here assembled, and of their dec'ded views in regard to the 
manner in which this war should be prosecuted, a copy of 
these resolutions be respectfully addres-ed to the President 
and each member of his Cabinet, to whom, by acclamation, 
we wish God-speed in theirglorious work of maintaining the 
unity, the freedom, and the supremacy of our common 
countiy. 

The reading of the resolutions was interrupted by 
applause, and tbey were adopted by acclamation. 

Mr. GiuswoLD read, amid great applause, ex- 
tracts from the letters of Gen. Scott, Gen. Halleck, 
Gen. Hooker, Archbishop Hughes and Gov. Tod. 
Tfce following is the letter from Gen. Hooker: 



Hkadquarteks Army of thk Potomac, ! 
AprU 9, 1863. 5 



To Jas. A. Roosevelt, Secretary Loyal League : 

Sir: Ackuowiedging the receipt of an iiivitatioi3 to be pres- 
ent at a mass meeting of the loyal citizens of theLuited 
States, to be held at New York on the 11th Instant, I have 
occasion to regret that my duties will not permit me to be 
present at that important assemblage. 

PeriKit me, tiowever, to express my hearty sympathy with 
the objects and purposes of the proposed demonstration, and 
to desire that my name may be placed with those who so love 
their country, its Union and its Constitution, as to be glad to 
renew pledges of loyalty and fealty as often ai ciicumsuujcei 
will demand. 
The frequent «38embling together of our countrymen for 



purposes of counsel and interchange of thought upon the 
great national question of the day is one of the useful and 
commendable duties of the times, which has my best wishes, 
as it has those of all honest and loyal men. 

The army which I have the honor to command is, I am 
proud to say, in such good heart and in so excellent a con- 
dition that I am warranted in pledging it to a gallant blow for 
the defence of our national unity and integrity, whenever the 
enemy shall be met by the Army of the Potomac. 

That God may speed the cause of the Union and popular 
liberty everywhere, is the hopeful aspiration of 
Your obedient servant, 

JOSEPH|H00KER, 
Majoi-General Commanding. 
Tne Mayor then eaid: 

I have now the honor of introducing to you a gen- 
tleman who is part and parcel of the Government — 
a distinguished member of the Administration — a 
gentleman of Southern birth and Southern associa- 
tions, but whose heart beats as loyal as yours or 
mine. I have the pleasure of presenting to you the 
Hon. Montgomery Blair. [Great applause, and 
" three cheers tor Blair. "] 

SPEECH OF MONTGOMERY BLAIR. 
Mr. Blair said: Fellow-citizens of New York, 
I am gratified to meet so vast an assemblage, and 
to unite with yoa in doing honor to the glorious 
cause which we have met here to pledge ourselves 
to support. This, my friends, is a most appropriate 
occasion upon which to renew our pledges to that 
flag which has come down to us with so many hal- 
lowed memories associated with the founders of this 
Government. The day upon which an attempt was 
made to subvert this Government is a day to be re- 
membered; it is a day to be remembered, and I hope 
with the treatment which we are going to give the 
traitors, that we will make it to be remem- 
bered by them tor eternity. [Cheers. " Good !"] 
The contest in which we are engaged is a struggle 
for the great idea underlying our political fabric, 
and as we live in an age when opinion is the great 
element of power, it is essential to our success that 
the true nature of the struggle should be compre- 
hended by good men at home and abroad. Some 
reference to the parties to it may contribute to effect 
this object. From the outset the oligarchic interest 
everywhere has been at no loss on which side to 
range itself. Everywhere it has identified itself 
witb the Rebellion because it battled in the cause of 
privilege and against free Government, and every- 
where it has exerted itself promptly, yet skillfully, 
to support the Rebel cause. Wielding vast power 
in all European Governments, controlling the whole 
foreign press and some of our own, and assuming 
from the first mutterings of the tempest that our 
ship of State was a wreck, as they had always pre- 
dicted it would be, they have looked on only to find 
facts to sustain a foregone conclusion and otherwise 
to exert all the power they could wield to consum- 
mate their wishes. I do not in thus speaking of this 
class, and especially of the European branch of it, 
wish to be understood as impeaching their motives 
or questioning the sincerity of their conviction that 
in the preservation of their own and kindred orders 
they are doing tee best for mankind. As individuals, 
and especially is this true of the British aristocracy, 
they are distinguished by a high sense of honor, 
by courage, truthfulness and other many qualities. 
But these personal characteristics only serve to give 
more efiect co a mistaken policy in antagonism to 
Ireedom and free government, which results neces- 
sarily from the relation to society to which 
they are born and bred. They justly feel 
that the continuance of such a Government as 
ours saps the foundation of their order day by 
day, and hence, though we meddle not 
in their affairs this class has wan-ed upon us from 
the day we set up our democratic establishment in 
the wilds of America. For the most part this war 
has been carried on in the field of opinion by writers 
hired to combat the natural yearnings of the human 
heart for liberty. We have replied only by contin- 
uing to minister to human happiness, giving free 
homes to tha oppressed, elevating the ^joor by in- 



struction in free schools and by having tlie Gospel 
preached to all craeds. There was one point, how- 
ever, upon which every letter-writer and book-mak- 
iDg tourist who catered to the appetite of the estab- 
lished orders for American disparagement failed not 
to comment with the greatest harshness. That was, 
that we tolerated African Slavery. So bitter have 
heen these denunciations thatmany persons supposed, 
whea the war broke out, that the English aristo- 
crats for once would have to be on the f-ide of those 
who were struggling for fi'ee government. Par from 
it. Like most of those among us who are now sig- 
nalizing themselves by denouncing the suspension 
of the writ of habeas corpus, the Conscription act, 
&c., their advocacy of freedom was, as we now 
see, only to serve the cause of Slavery. It was for 
the freedom we cherished, not for the Slavery we 
tolerated, they reviled us. See these proud aristo- 
crats now, arming the slave-drivers at Richmond 
with iron-clad ships to strike down Freedom', for- 
getting even the iusults offered a few years since by 
their present allies, the Richmond snobbery, to the 
heir apparent of the Eoglish crown ! But do not 
suppose that by pointing to the evidences of sym- 
pathy and alliance between these domestic and for- 
eign foes of free government, I seek to stir you to 
wrath against England. Far from it; for while it 
is true that in all essentials the British peer and 
our vulgar Masons and Slidells and the silly 
women who insult Union soldiers are the 
same order of people, difteriDg only in cul- 
tivation and external circumstances, but agreeing 
in the distinguishing characteristic of having no faith 
in humanity; yet you must remember that these 
worldlings do not rule eitlier in England or America. 
Despite of their opposition, Slavery was struck 
doWn in the British realm, and despite of them the 
great Republic will be saved, and the slave machin- 
ery applied to subvert it destroyed. I feel assured 
of this, because not only our own people, but the 
people of Europe, are beginning to understand, 
what I have said the aristocrats everywhere have 
understood from the first, that this is a battle for com- 
mon people throughout the world, and that they 
now are, or soon will be, ready to make common 
cause for freedom against the wide -spread conspiracy 
of aristocrats to destroy it. It is true that Lord 
Lyons tells his Government that our " Democratic 
leaders" came stealthily to him and made known 
their wish and purpose " to put an end to the war, 
even at the lisk of losing the Southern States 
altogether,'" but " that it was not thought prudent 
to avow this desire, and that some hints of it, 
dropped before the elections, were so ill received, 
that a strong declaration in the contrary sense was 
deemed necessary by the Democratic leaders." 
Lord Lyons furtner states that these Democratic 
"leaders' thought "that the oft'^r of mediation, if 
made to a Radical Administration, would be rejected 
— ^that if made at an uupropitious moment, it might 
increase the virulence with which the war is prose- 
cuted. If their own party were in power, or virtu- 
ally controlled the Administration, they would 
rather, if possible, obtain an armistice without the 
aid of foreign Governments; but they would be 
disposed to accept an olfsr ot mediation, if it 
appeared to be the only means of putting 
a stop to hostilities. They would desire 
that the offer should come from the great Powers 
of Europe, conjointly; and, in particular, that 
as little prominence as possible should be given to 
Great Britain." This is the sum of his lordship's 
revelations, and if it were not that he entirely mis- 
takes the character and influence of his men they 
might be ominous of the result which he and the 
British Ministry so confidently predict and devoutly 
wish. If the " chiefs " whom he describes as 
" calling loudly for a more vigorous prosecution of 
the war, and reproaching the Government witb. 
slackness as well as with want of success in ita 
military measures," but telling him that it was their 
wish " to put an end to it at the risk of losing the 
Soatheru States altogether," were really as able as 



he snpposes ihey are to bring the true Democracy of 
the North to adopt the plans of ibe S9ce8nou:st8 for 
the extentioa of Slavery to make it the fouudation 
of ihe poliiicil institaiions of the country, or to 
assent to the division of the couiKry— rewguing one 
halfof it. to Slavery— 'hen, in^Jeed, might tDeeueiines 
of popular goverument indulge their fond hope that 
tbebrijiht prospects which opened on the birthday 
of free iuBticutioQS in the New World, and have at- 
tended its progress to this hour, would S3on close. 
But it is apparent even from the narrative ot the 
worthy and truly honorable represeniaiive of 
England, that "the leaders ' who conferred with 
him were conscious thst they could not iead ibeir 
party to saiction their purpo-es, that they were 
forced to disavow them, ai d advised posiponeiueut 
of the offer of mediation till they should come into 
power, which they only hoj ed to secure by " calhng 
loudly for a more vigo"rous prosecution of the war, 
and reproaching the Government with slackness as 
well as with want of success in its mibtary meas- 
ures !" But the iirimecse popular Hssemblies which 
have everywhere deuouuced mecirition of uny sort 
show that no siub jugglery would avail. Tde most 
distinguished leaders of the Democracy m th s great 
commonwealth attended the vast meeting of the bth 
of March. They are here again to-night, 'f'bey 
unite in council with the members of the Republican 
party with the chiefs of the old Whig party, with 
those of the original Anti-Slavery party, with tDe 
American party. lecub.arJy jealous of foreign influ- 
ence, and with those of other strong classes which 
embrace with a sort of kindred sympathy the natural- 
ized citizens of all Europe as brothers eniranchised 
from feudal fetters, and lising here to usefulness and 
influence as the equals of the native born freeman. 
Every party and every class by whom free institu- 
tions are held dear in this country, merging all minor 
differences of opinion, are gathering in every quarter 
to devise measures to restore the nationality, secure 
the literties of the country, and to give eflect to 
these, the shouts of battle from a milhon of brave 
men are beard by Und and sea. They see the feudal 
lords who hold the slaves in the South in bondage, 
to raise the commodities on which the laborers of the 
feudal lords in Europe are to exhaust their energies 
to exalt their privileged orders, are supported by 
such orders because of a common interest in tl e en- 
elavement of mankind. And if the vassalage which 
holds the black race as mere animated machine?, and 
i8 rapidly reducing the poor whites of the South to 
a dependence and suffering, rendering the fate of the 
slave of a kind master eu-v-iable— if euch vassalage 
is to be upheld by the great modern dynasties abroad, 
combining their military power to give support to 
the despotic principle in a nation separated from 
them by the ocean, bow long will it be before 
such armed usurpation here will, by its 
reactionary force, recover the arbitrary power 
that belonged to the age of the Bourbons, the 
Tudors, and of that horde of feudal proprietors who 
monopolized the soil, holding the people as serls ap- 
purtenant to the domain of masters, rising as a su- 
perstructure of oppression through grades from ba- 
rons, counts, dukes, prince?, kings, and emperors to 
autocrats ? Our Southern chivalry, which but a 
generation back signed our Magna Charta of hberty 
and equality, in the course of one lifetime, by the 
indoctriualion of the Slave system, working ou one 
poor oppressed caste, are already prepared to join 
the Holy Alliance abroad in making a partition of 
this coulinent and setting up dynasties deriving their 
type from the Congress of Vienna, and tney have an 
improved feature on the old feudal system, tending 
to reinvigorate it. In that State which lud off in 
the assault upon the Union, the ownership of tea 
slaves, or an equivalent, was an essential qualifica- 
tion for a legislator. Carrying out this pnmiple, 
the Confederate Coogress lias decreed that twenty 
Blavea shall exempt the master from military ser- 
vice. This will operate as a premium for multiply- 
ing slaves and divide the communny into two great 
classes, the producers and the soldiery; creating a 



military government, one portion of the people to 
tight, the other to feed the fighters. The starveling 
whites not suited to war and not subjected as sol- 
diers will become slaves to the owners of estates on 
whom they must daiend. That the crowned heads 
of Europe, who are invited to make the political 
constitutfons of this coniiuent, as well as its cotton, 
their concern, should have a disposition to admit 
States into the. Holy Alliance which gives such 
earnest of hostility to fie « government, ia not un- 
natural. But vvhat will the more enlightened 
portion of the European population think of 
this combination with slaveholders to extir- 
pate hberty in America ? Tne organs of the 
privileged orders in Great Britain, the Quarterly 
Review, Tim Times, &c., already congratulated 
their patrons ou the fact that Rr bellion here has ar- 
rested Reform iu England. They proclaim that 
Lords Paluierston and Russell reached their power 
in England by pledges of reform, and now they re- 
joice that the Rebellion has exonerated them from 
their obligation ! They would now, for the third 
time, attempt to crush the free principles which, 
nurtured here beyond the reach of despotic coali- 
tions, has attained a prosperity, spreading an influ- 
ence back to the couuiry of their origin, reforming 
their Government and elevating their people; and 
it is in the interest ol the selfish few that the pro- 
gress of nations in reforoa, in freedom and happi- 
ness, is to be arrested. Is it possible that a great 
war, waged by the potentates of Europe, in alliance 
with tee slave system propagated lu the South, 
against the Free States of America, will be cordially 
supported bv the substantial, intelligent body of the 
European populations ? Can Lord Lyons persuade 
himself or them that there are Democratic leaders 
in the Free States capable of drawing the Demo- 
cratic masses to join foreign powers iu mediating a 
peace dividing the empire of free government on 
this continent with Slavery, European sovereigns 
to hold the balance of the continent 1 No patriot, 
no honest man of any party, no Democrat of 
influence with a party which has never been 
wanting to the country when its fortunes hung 
upon the scale of battle, could have made 
the questions which were submitted to Lord Lyons. 
Davis, Benjamin, Floyd and Toombs call them- 
selves Democrats. Ttieir emissaries iu Europe, 
Slidell, Sanders and Mason, call themselves Demo- 
crats. Their creatures in the Free States, Buchanan, 
Toucey, and the suljaltem traitors associated with 
tbem, spared by the clemency of the Administration, 
call themselves Democrats. But these men iu the 
North ave only so many men on gibbets. The real 
Democrats everywhere are with the real Republicans, 
in arms for their. country and its Constitution. It is 
not the interest of natious to destroy each other, and 
1 hope no nation will interpose in any way to coun- 
tenance the treason which has no object but the 
overthrow of republican institutions. The only 
effect would be to embitter and prolong the strife. 
England esj eeially, which has some consciousness of 
the^value of such institutions, and has evinced a full 
sense of the mischiefs of the slave power now seek- 
ing her help to sacrifice them here, will. I doubt not, 
recoil from the leprous touch. There was a time, 
indeed, when even that very class of Englishmen 
who would now see the Great Republic fall with so 
much satisfaction, looked toward it with very difter- 
eut feelings. It was when they apprehended in- 
vasion from France. Then the Free States of this 
continent, proud of their race and of the inspiration, 
responded to the patriotic heart of Britain. They 
did not intend to be passive while " the Latin r-M^' 
establiehed their ascendancy in the fatherland. 
At that dread crisis English statesmen recognized 
the value of this kindred sympathy, and honored 
the niaynanimiiy which, forgetting the oppression 
dealt to us as an infant people aspiring to equality 
with their brethren beyond tlie Atlantic— remember- 
ing only the glorv of a commou Imeage, language, 
and literature— ihey felt, and with reason, that tue 
mutual abhorrence of Slavery iu whatever form im- 



posed, would induce the Government of the United 
btates to make common cause with Eosland affainst 
any attempt to invade or enelave ber. But now that 
tUeir apprehensions ofdaiuer from across tlie Chaa- 
n»ifV^^'''^ time allajed, and they ieel no preeeni 
need of help, the feeliug for America, whid> for a 
moment expanded the hearts even of ihe Enoiish 
lordliQgs. has passed away. They have hecome as 
earnest as m '76 to overthrow our Government and 
are co-operating with the Rebels, as with the Tories 
in every possible way short of declared w«-, and 
have clearly evinced their disposition to take even 
that step wheiievrr we will give them a pretext for 
t wbich will carry the people of EugUnd with 
them. We cannot tlierefore be too careful tot to 
furnish the desired pretext, especially when the p'o- 
ple of Europe as well as of America are awakeninsr 
to their interest in this struijgle. We bad better 
suffer for a time trom the pirates set afloat in En- 
Rlma, and harbored and provisioned in their West 
inaw ?r't'''T'^ '° devastate our commerce, to 
enable the En-lish nation to put a stop to these out- 
rages. I have confidence that tiiey will do it, and I 
much prefer the mode adopted by the real noblemen 
of New York to touch the hearts of the rea! nobility 
ot England— tbe men who love truth and justice— 
to whom alone she owes her greatness among the 
nations of the earth-to that pronoeed" by 
my friend, General Butler. To -send thi 
starving poor of England cargoes of food, while 
ZlL 7'* "-'.Y^^s are turning loose upon us piratical 
vessels, tells more than words can express of the na- 
ture ot this struggle and who are allies in it. I will 
venture to affirm that the mediating leaders who 
visited the British Minister in November are ^o? 
among those who. while exhibiting such mut^ificence 
tov?ard his countrymen, were lavishing millions to 
flostain free government, although most of them are 
Democrats. Tlie Rebellion here, this reactionarv 
measure against free government, reacts across the 
water, stops all progress, all beneficence and reform 
lor the people of Europe. That is the nature of this 
contest. You cannot, therefore, if vou love vour- 
eelvee, your rights, and the rights of those whom 
you are to leave behind you, if you love vour 
brothers in fatherland, and wish to have an asylum 
lor them, ana to extend the priucioles of liberty in 
the old continent, you cannot but 'stand up for the 
(government ydu have installed here, regardlees for 
the moment of whom you have placed in power. 
1 am a member, as my friend said, of the existing 
Government, and I say to you here, although iti 
measures may not meet the approval of some of 
you, yet rely upon it, you have as honest a man as 
ever God made installed in the chair of the Chief Maff- 
letrale. [Loud applause.] We have a man from the 
people, like many of those I see before me, bavins 
a heart sympathetic for the masses, a man working 
his way from an humble and obscure position up t% 
the elevated poeition that he now tills, and, of 
course, he feels, and feels deeply, as one of you, the 
nature of the struggle that I have betn endeavoring 
to paint. You must support him, my friends It is 
your cause; not his. [Three cheers for the Presi- 
dent. I Ihanking you again, my friends, for the cor- 
diility and kmdnets with which vou have been pleased 
to receive me, I give way to ocbers who can aid 
mucti to what I have said, and say it better. fPro- 
longed cheers.] ^ 

Calls for "Butler" and " Fremont." 
John Austin Stevens, jr., ,ead the letter from 
Secretary Chase. It was received with frequent ap- 
plause. 
Loud calls for " Fremont." 

Mayor Opdyke— Gentlemen, I have now the 
pleasure cf introducing to you a distinguished and 
eloquent representative in Congress from a sister 
State, a gentleman who has stood by the Govern- 
ment manfully and fearlessly; I introduce to you 
Judge Kelley of Philadelphia. [Loud appliuee.] 



SPEECH OP THE HON. W. D. KELLEY. 

Judge Kelley said: In the name of uncondi- 
tional loyalty to the Constitution, Philadelphia 
greets New York. [Cheers.] In the name of the 
nnity of that country, founded by theorigiaal of that 
grand monument [the statue of Washington was im- 
mediately in front of the stand], the Keystone sends 
greeting to the Empire State. [Applause.] And this 
aitertvvoyearsof war— two vearsof war! We of 
Pennsylvania have tears for the dead, sympathy for 
the mang ed and the bereaved, but these are for our 
individual hearts, our private circles; for our country 
we have but pride and devotion [cheering "Gaod 
good"]; two years of war in which the Ruler of 
1 rovideuce has more clearlv than ever before la 
Distory, demonstrated how from seeming evil He is 
edacing good, how within His purposes it is to make 
the folly and wrath of men to praise Him 
[cheers]; two years in which the Araericaa 
people have made more of glorious history 
than ever was made before in "the same brief 
period, p, my countrymen, look back over that 
little period of two years and remember when in the 
lirst wild outburst of wounded and indignant patriot- 
lem you gathered to this square. Your country was 
bankrupt; you could not horrow at one per cent a 
month the little sum of $5,000,COO; your navy lay in 
Southern yards in ordinary, upon the distant coast 
ot Africa or m the far Pacific; your army was ou the 
troniiers of lexas, in New Mexico, in the far Terri- 
tory of Wasbiogton, everywhere but where your 
Government could command it; vour arsenals 
emptied alike of arms and ammunition and accouter- 
ments; an enemy, strengthened by your navy and 
by your mihtary resources, had fired upon your flajr 
aud threatened to unfurl from the dome of your 
capitol a foreign banner, but the heart of America 
did not tremble, and two years of war, even disasters, 
has not chilled or bated our patriotism. [Cbeers 

?V°°'."J , ^^^ ^""^ '^^'■^ ^^-^^y 'o say "ihat no star 
must be stricken from our flag [" Never"]; no acre 
of our country surrendered it it takes from our 
lockers the last dollar and from our heanh-sides the 
last able-bodied boy. [Cheers, " Hurrah."] These 
are the sentiments of Pennsylvania, and I am glad 
you respond to them with such fervor. We behold all 
the possible consequences of the war; we have made a 
navy; we have made an army such as the eye of God 
never beheld before upon this planet; we have con- 
quered m two years well-nigh 400,000 square miles 
ot territory. ['• Good ! good !"] We have not bor- 
rowed of England or the Continent, or any foreign 
man or nation, one picayune toward bearinsr the ex- 
pense. [Applause.] Oh, my friends, this is a proud 
day. We had demonstrated, before Rebel hands 
desecrated our flag, the beneficence of republican 
institutions. In eighty short years we had con- 
quered a Continent. Yes, our flag floated on yoa 
li^astem promontoiies in the broad blaze of the noon- 
day sun, while there on our golden eaads, the moru- 
ng- daw-n just tipped its stars, and ail was ours, 
and civilization was blooming over all. We had 
demonstrated the capacity of man for self-'^overn- 
ment anl of popular institutions, raised the poor emi- 
grant and his cbildren to the fall stature of manhood 
and to all the powers and rights of citizenshio, nay 
to the capacity not only to enjov, but to exercise 
them all. [Cheers.j The potentates of Europe had 
seen the peasant aud the liborer expand into the 
citizen and the capitalist; they had seen 
from the humblest walks of life the man 
of honor, wealth, and distinction epilog 
Eighty years had served to demonstrate this. 
But, was their sneer— a good Gi'verument for peace* 
yet no Government for war. la it not a Govern- 
ment for w.ir ? Wben Congress passed what the 
Copperheads cull the Coubtrit.tion bill, and served 
notice upon Frauce and England that every man 
who had not dejjending upon him, and him alone 
aged parents or tender chilaood, should be called to' 



// 



the field, they concluded that all Earope in alliance 
would not do to meet the American people under 
that Government which was not good for war. 
1 Cheers.] So good for war that, while we go on to 
conquer those who are armed with our resources, 
we hold the envious aristocracy of Europe in check, 
and dare them to do their worst [cheersl , and dare 
them BO defiantly, that I refer you to the New York 
papers of the day for the altered opinion of Lord 
John Kuesell, as expressed in the House of Lords. 
{Cheers. " Give it" to him !" " Bully !"1 Bully for 
the American people. [Cheers.] Bully for those 
institutions [" Bully for Kelley"] that open the 
Bchool-houBe for the poor child, and give a just re- 
turn for all the lahor that he or bis parents perform. 
What is this war ? What is it about ? Between whom 
is it, men of New York? ["Three cheers for Kelley.''] 
No, do oot cheer so insignificant a being; keep ({.^^fh 
and hear him. Is it between j)olitical parties ? No ; 
here on this stand are men of all parties. I do not 
know what party I belong to. I was tool or ^nueT 
enough to hasten home m 1852 to vote for b rank 
Pierce, and since then I have been fighting for free- 
dom and civilizatiou in the ranks of the Republican 
oarty. [Cheers; "Good."] No, my friends, not 
Wtween political parties ; nor is it between contend- 
ing States. Tbe bne seems to divide States, but 
take the exception. East Tennessee and West Vir- 
ginia are loyal as New York or Pennsylvania 
["Good, gooa"], though one of them lies south of 
Kentucky, and tbe other has been held by Eastern 
Virginia,as Russia holds Poland, or as England has 
held Ireland. [Cheers.] Yet they are loyal. It is a war 
between two orders of civilizatiou— the order of 
civilization which we enjoy, which opens a school- 
house to every child coming into the oommonwealtb 
by birth or emigration ; which gives to the son of the 
poorest laborer, whether of native or foreign birth , the 
mastery of the English language, the art of writing 
and of figures, aud enables hiiu to go forth and arm 
himself with knowledge, and wisdom, and power to 
contend with the world and get a fair day's wages 
for a fair day's work. The otber order of civiliza- 
tion is one which holds that capital should own its 
labor; that laboring men and women should be held 
for sale and purchase like cattle in the stall or upon 
the shamt'les. And, my friends, do not let us blink 
tbe question. The taking of Fort Sumter, tbe tak- 
ing of Vicksburg, will not settle the war. One or 
the other of these orders of ciAnlization must be vic- 
torious, triumnhant over the whole land before you 
can have pea'ce. [Cheers. "That's the talk."] 
You have heard from Secretary Chase. Like him, 
I am for letting the darkey in. I do not think he is 
a bit better than I or you. and I do not see why he 
Bhould not do picket duty in the swamps as well as 
I or my flon. 1 do not see why he should not work 
for us as ably as he worked for his enemy, and I am 
for letting him in, and letting him, under the Stars and 
Stripes, win his way to' freedom by proving on the 
bloody field the power of his manhood. [" Bravo." 
Applause.] This we have to do. This we will do. 
And having done it, we will — having sunk the 
traitors, from Fernando up or down, whichever it 
migbt be— [laughter and applause]— we will have 
sunk them deeper than ever plummet sounded ; we 
will have so squelched treason that our children and 
our children's children to the latest generation will 
never fear another ci^il war. We will have peace 
v/ith England and with France, and, what is more, 
we will tiave oemonstrated to the world the power 
siS well as the beneficence of republican institutions; 
we will have shown the world that that Constitution 
named under his [pointing to the statue of Washiog- 
ton] wise auBpites is not only beneficent over a 
young and peaceful people, but is a fit canopy— I say 
is a fit canopy for a coniinent. [Loud aud prolonged 
applause, and three cheers for Kelley ] 
Loud calls for " Fremont." 

The Mayor, amid loud applause, introduced Brig.- 
Gen. Crawford of Penn., one of the defenders of 
Fort Sumter under Major Anderson. 
SpeeobcB were Bubsequently made by Benj. H. 



Brewster, esq., of Philadelphia; Col. Stewart E.. 
Woodford, Col. Taylor, and ex-Councilman Horatio 
N. Wild; and an ode was read by William Ross 
Wallace; after which, as the shades of night were 
falling, the Mayor adjourned tbe meeting, with loud 
cheers for the Union and the Star-Spangled Banner. 



ADDEESS BY PEANOIS LIEBEE, 

CUAIRMAN ON THE COUNCIL'S COMMITTEE ON- 

ADDRESSES. 
Kcail at the Meeting of the Loyal National League,. 

In/ their request, in Union Square, New York,. 

on the nth of April, 1863. 

It is just and wise that men engaged in a 
great and arduous cause should profess anew, 
from time to time, their faith, and pledge them- 
selves to one another, to stand by their cause to 
the last extremity, even at the sacrifice of all 
they have and all that God has given them — 
their wealth, their blood, and their eliildreu's 
blood. We solemnly pledge all this to our cause, 
for it is the cause of our country and her noble 
history, of freedom, and justice, and truth — it is 
the cause of all we hold dearest on this earth : 
we profess and pledge this— plainly, broadly, 
openly, in the cheering time of success, and most 
fervently in tbe day of trial and reverses. 

We recollect how, two years ago, when reck- 
less arrogance attacked Fort Sumter, the response 
to that boom of treasonable cannon was read, in 
our city, in the flag of our country — waving from- 
every steeple and school-house, from City Hall 
and court house, from every shop window and 
rr.arket-stall, aud fluttering in the band of every 
child and on the head-gear of every horse in the 
busy street. Two years have passed ; uncounted 
sacrifices have been made — sacrifices of wealth, 
of blood, and limb, and life— of .friendship and 
brotherhood, of endeared and hallowed pursiiits 
and sacred ties — and still the civil war is raging 
in bitterness and heart-burning — still we make 
the same profession, and still we pledge ourselves 
firmly to hold on to our cause and persevere in 
the struggle into which unrighteous men, be- 
wildered by pride and stimulated by bitter 
hatred, have plunged us. 

AVe profess ourselves to be loyal citizens of 
these United States; and by loyalty we mean a 
candid and loving devotion to the object to- 
which a loyal man — a loyal husband, a loyal 
friend, a loyal citizen — devotes himself. We es- 
chew the attenuated argument derived by trifling 
scholars from meagre etymology. We take the 
core aud substance of this weighty word, and 
pledge ourselves that we will loyally — not merely 
outwardly and formally, according to the letter, 
but ferveutly and according to the spirit— adhere 
to our country, to her institutions, to freedom 
and her power, and to that great institutioa 
called the government of our country, founded 
by our fathers, and loved by their sons and by 
all right-minded men who have become citizens 
of this land by choice and not by birth-—who 
have wedded this coimtry in the maturity of 
their age as verily their own. We pledge our- 
selves as national men devoted to the nationality 
of this great people. No government can wholly 
dispense with loyalty, except the fiercest despot- 
ism ruling by naked intimidation; but a republic 
stands in greater need of it than any other gov- 



•ernment, and most of all a republic heset by 
open rebellion and insidious treason. Loyalty is 
pre-eminently a civic virtue in a free country. 
It is patriotism cast in the graceful mold of 
candid devotion to the harmless government of 
an unshackled nation. 

In pledging ourselves thus we know of no party. 
Parties are unavoidable in free countries, and may 
be useful if they acknowledge the country far 
above themselves and remain within the sanctity 
of the fundamental law which protects the enjoy- 
ment of liberty prepared for all within its sacred 
domain. But Party has no meaning in far the 
greater number of the highest and the com- 
mon relations of human life. When we are ail- 
ing, we do not take medicine by party prescrip- 
tion. We do not build ships by party measure- 
ment ; we do not pray for our daily bread by 
party distinctions ; we do not take our chosen 
ones to our bosoms by party demarcations, nor 
do we eat or drink, sleep or wake, as partisans. 
We do not enjoy the flowers of spring, nor do 
we harvest the grain, by party lines. We do not 
incur punishments for infractions of the com- 
mandments according to party creeds ; and we 
do not, we must not, love and defend our country 
and our liberty, dear to us as part and portion 
of our very selves, according to party rules and 
divisions. Woe to him who does. When a house 
is on fire, and a mother with her child cries for 
help att the window above, shall the firemen at 
the engine be allowed to trifle away the precious 
time in party bickerings, or is then the only 
word — " Water ! pump away ; up with the lad- 
<ier !" 

Let us not be like the Byzantines, those 
wretches who quarreled about contemptible 
party refinements, theological though they were, 
while the truculent Mussulman was steadily 
drawing nearer — nay, some of whom would even 
go to the lord of the crescent, and with a craven 
lieai't would beg for a pittance of the spoil, so 
that they would be spared, and could vent their 
party hatred against their kin in bloody and 
fellows in religion. 

We know of no party in our present troubles ; 
theword is here an empty word. The only line 
which divides the people of the north runs be- 
tween the mass of loyal men, who stand by their 
country, no matter to what place of political 
meeting they were used to resort, or with what 
accent they utter the language of the land, or 
what religion they profess, or what sentiments 
they may have uttered in the excitement of 
former discussions, on the one hand, and those, 
on the other hand, who keep outside of that 
line — traitors to their country in the hour of 
need, or those who allow themselves to be misled 
by shallow names, and by reminiscences which 
cling around those names from bygone days, 
finding no application in a time which asks for 
things more sterling than names, theories, or 
platforms. 

If an alien enemy were to land his hosts on 
your shores, would you fly to your arms and 
ring the tocsin because your country is in danger, 
or would you meditatively look at your sword 
and gun, and spend your time in pondering 
■whether the administration in power, which 
must and can alone direct the defence of your 
hearths, has a right to be styled by this or that 
. party name, or whether it came into power with 



your assistance, and will appoint some of your 
party to posts of honor or comfortable emolu- 
ments? And will any one now lose his time 
and fair name as an honest and brave citizen, 
when no foreigner, indeed, threatens your coun- 
try, at least not directly, but far more, when a 
heedless host of law-def^'ing men, heaping upon 
you the vilest vituperation that men who do not 
leave behind them the ingenuity of civilization 
when they relapse into barbarism, can invent—^ 
when this host threatens to sunder your country 
and cleave your very history in twain, to deprive 
j'ou of your rivers which God has given you, to 
extinguish your nationality, to break down, your 
liberty, and to make that land, which the dis- 
tributor of our sphere's geography has placed 
between the old and older world as the greatest 
link of that civilization which is destined to en- 
circle the globe — to make that land tho hot-bed 
of angry, petty powers, sinking deeper and deeper 
as they quarrel and fight, and quarreling and 
fighting more angrily as they sink deeper ? It is 
the very thing your foreign enemies desire and 
have long desired. When nullification threaten^ 
ed to bring about secession — and the term seces- 
sion was used at that early period — foreign 
journals stated in distinct words that England 
was deeply interested in the contest; for nullifi- 
cation might bring on secession, and secession 
would cause a general disruption — an occurrence 
which would redound to the essential benefit of 
Great Britain. 

But the traitors of the North, who have been 
so aptly called adders or copperheads-r— striking 
as these reptiles do, more secretly and deadly 
even than the rattlesnake, which has some chiv- 
alry, at least, in its tail — believe, or pretend to 
believe, that no fragmentary disruption would 
follow a division of our country into North and 
South, and advocate a compromise by which 
they pretend to believe that the two portions 
may possibly be reunited after a provisional 
division, as our peddlers putty some broken china 
cup. 

As to the first, that we might pleasantly divide 
into two comfortable portions, we prefer being 
guided by the experience of all history, to fol- 
lowing the traitors in their teachings. We will 
not hear of it. We live in an age when the 
word is nationalization, not denationalization ; 
when fair Italy has risen, like a new-born god- 
dess, out of the foaming waves of the Mediterra- 
nean. A.11 destruction is quick and easy ; all 
growth and formation is slow and toilsome. Na- 
tions break up, like splendid mirrors dashed to 
the ground. They do not break into a number 
of well-shaped, neatly framed, little looking- 
glasses. But a far more solemn truth even than 
this comes here into play. It is with nations as 
with families and with individuals. Those des- 
tined by nature to live in the bonds of friendship 
and mutual kindliness become the bitterest and 
most irreconcilable enemies, when once fairly 
separated in angrj' enmity, in precisely the same 
degree in which affection and good-will was in- 
tended to subsist between them. We must have 
back the South, or else those who will not re- 
unite with us must leave the country ; we must 
have the country at any price. If, however, a 
plain division between the North and the South 
could take place, who will deny that those very 
traitors would instantly begin to maneuver for a 



8 



gradual annexation of the North to the South ? 
It is known to be so. Some of them, void of 
all shame, have avowed it. They are ready to 
petition on their tnees for annexation to the 
South, and to let the condescending grantor, 
" holding the while his nose," introduce slavei-y, 
that blessed "corner-stone of the newest " civili- 
zation," into the North, which has been happily 
purged from this evil. Let us put the heel on 
this adder and bruise all treason out of its head. 
As to the compromise which they pi'opose, we 
know of no compromise with crime that is not 
criminal itself, and senseless in addition to its 
being wicked. New guarantees, indeed, may be 
asked for at the proper time, but it is now our 
turn to ask for them. They will be guaran- 
tees of peace, of the undisturbed integrity of 
our country, of law, and liberty, and security, 
asked for and insisted upon by the Union men, 
who now pledge themselves not to listen to the 
words compromise, new guarantees for the South, 
armistice, or convention of delegates from the 
South and North — as long as this war shall last, 
until the North is victorious, and shall have es- 
tablished again the national authority over the 
length and breadth of the country as it was; 
over the United States dominion as it was before 
the breaking out of the crime which is now ruin- 
ing our fair land — ruining it in point of wealth, 
but, with God's help, elevating it in character, 
strength, and dignity. 

We believe that the question of the issue, 
which must attend the present contest, according 
to the character it has now acquired, is reduced 
to these simple words : Either the North con- 
quers the South, or the South conquers the North. 
Make up your minds for this alternative. Either 
the Noith conquers the South and re-establishes 
law, freedom, and the integrity of our country, 
or the South conquers the North by arms, or 
by treason at home, and covers our portion of the 
coimtry with disgrace and slavery. 

Let us not shriuk from facts or mince the truth, 
but rather plainly present to our minds the es- 
sential character of the struggle in which hun- 
dreds of thousands, that ought to be brothers, 
are now engaged. What has brought us to these 
grave straits ? 

Are we two different races, as the new ethnol- 
ogists of the South, with profound knowledge of 
history and of their own skins, names, and lan- 
gimge, proclaim ? Have they produced the names 
which Europe mentions when American literature 
is spoken of? Have they advanced science? 
Have they the great schools of the age ? Do they 
speak the choice idiom of the cultivated man ? 
Have the thinkers and inventors of the age their 
homes in that region? Is'their standai-d of com- 
fort exalted above that of ours? What has this 
wondrous race produced? what new idea has it 
added to the great stock of civilization? It has 
produced cotton, and added the idea that slavery 
is divine. Does this establish a superior race ? 

There is no fact or movement of greater signi- 
ficance in all history of the human race, than the 
settlement of this great continent by European 
people at a period when, in their portion 
of the globe, great nations had been formed, and 
the national polity had finally become the 
normal type of government; and it is a fact 
equally pregnant with momentous results that 
the northern portion of this hemisphere came to 



be colonized chiefly by men who brought along 
with them the seeds of self-government, and a 
living common law, instinct with the principles 
of manly self-dependence and civil freedom. 

The charters under which they settled, and 
which divided the American territory into 
colonies, were of little more importance than the 
vessels and their names in which the settlers 
crossed the Atlantic ; nor had the origin of these- 
charters a deep meaning, nor was their source 
always pure. The people in this country al- 
ways felt themselves to be one people, and 
unitedly they proclaimed and achieved their 
independence. The country as a whole was 
called by Washington and his compeers America, 
for want of a more individual name. Still, there 
was no outward and legal bond between the 
colonies, except the crown of England ; and 
when our people abjured their allegiance to that 
crown, each colony stood formally for itself. 
The Articles of Confederation were adopted, by 
which our forefathers attempted to establish a 
confederacy, uniting all that felt themselves to 
be of one nation, but were not one by outward 
legal form. It was the best united government 
our forefathers could think of, or of which, per- 
haps, the combination of circumstances admitted. 
Each colony came gradually to be called a state, 
and called itself sovereign, although none of 
them had ever exercised any of the highest 
attributes of sovereignty ; nor did ever after the 
states do so. 

Whenever political societies are leagued to- 
gether, be it by the frail bonds of a pure con- 
federacy, or by the consciousness of the people 
that they are intrinsically one people, and' 
form one nation, without, however, a positive 
national government, then the most powerful of" 
these ill-united portions needs must rule ; and, 
as always more than one portion wishes to b& 
the leader, intestine struggles ensue in all such 
incoherent governments. It has been so in anti- 
quity ; it has been so in the middle ages ; it has 
been so and is so in modern times. Those of our 
forefathers who later became the framers of our 
Constitution, saw this approaching evil, and they 
observed many other ills which had already 
overtaken the confederacy. Even Washington, 
the strong and tenacious patriot, was brought to- 
the brink of despondency. It was a dark period 
in our history ; and it was then that our fathers 
most boldly, yet most considerately, performed 
the greatest act that our annals record— they 
engrafted a national, complete, and representa- 
tive government on our halting confedei^acy ; a 
government in which the senate, though still 
representing the states as states, became na- 
tionalized in a great measure, and in which the 
House of llcpresentatives became exclusively 
national. Virginia, which, under the Articles of 
Confederation, was approaching the leadership 
over all (in the actual assumption of which she 
would have been I'csisted by other rapidly grow- 
ing states, which would inevitably have led to 
our Peloponnesian wai) — Virginia was now 
represented according to her population, like 
every other portioii of the country ; not as 
Virginia, not as a unit, but by a number of 
representatives who voted, and were bound to 
vote individurtlly, according to their consciences 
and best light, as national men. The danger 
of internal struggle and provincial bittemeea 



9 



%ad passed, and our country now fairly en- 
tered as an equal among the leading nations in 
the course where nations, like Olympic chariot- 
horses, draw abreast tli>i car of civilization. We 
advanced rapidly; the task assigned to us by 
Providence was performed with a rapidity which 
had not been known before ; for we had a national 
government commensui-ate to our laud and our 
destiny. 

But while thus united and freed from pro- 
vincial retardation and entanglements, a new 
portent appeared. 

Slavery, wliich had been planted here in. the 
colonial times, and which had been increased in 
this country by the parent government, against 
the urgent protestations of the colonists, and 
especially of the Virginians, existed in all the 
colonies at the time when they declared them- 
selves independent. It was felt by all to be an 
evil, which must be dealt with as best it might 
be, and the gradual extinction of which must be 
wisely yet surely provided for. Even Mr. 
Calhoun, in his earlier days, called slavery a 
scaffolding erected to rear the mansion of civili- 
zation, which must be taken down when the 
fabric is finished. 

This institution gave way gradually as civili- 
zation advanced. It has done so in all periods 
of history, and especially of Christian history. 
Slavery melts away like snow before the rays of 
rising civilization. The South envied the North 
forgetting rid of slavery so easily, and often ex- 
pressed her envy. But a combination of 
untoward circumstances led the South to change 
her mind. First, it was maintained that if 
slavery is an evil, it was their affair, and no one 
else had a right to discuss it or interfere with it ; 
then it came to be maintained that it was no 
■evil; then slavery came to be declared an im- 
portant national element, which required its own 
distinct representation and especial protection ; 
then it was said — we feel ashamed to mention 
it — that slavery is a divine institution. To use 
the words of the great South-Carolinian, whose 
death we deeply mourn — of James Louis Petigru 
— they placed, like the templars, Christ and 
Baphomet on the same altar. Yet still another 
step was to be taken. It was proclaimed that 
•slavery is a necessary element of a new and 
.glorious civilization, and those who call them- 
selves conservatives plunged recklessly into a 
new-fangled theory of politics and civilization. 

Thus slavery came to group asjain the diffe- 
rent portions of our country outside of, and 
indeed in hostility to, the national govern- 
ment and national constitution. The struggle 
for the leadership was upon us. The South 
declared openly that it must rule ; we, in 
the meantime, declaring that the nation must 
rule, and if an issue is forced upon us, between 
the South and the North, then, indeed, the 
North must rule and shall rule. Tliis is the war 
in which we are now engaged — in which, at the 
moment this is read to you, the prepious blood of 
our sons, and brothers, and fathers, is flowing. 

Whenever men are led, in the downward 
course of error and passion, ultimately to declare 
themselves, with immoral courage, in favor of 
a thing or principle which centuries and thou- 
sands of years of their own race have declared, 
by a united voice, an evil or a crime, the mischief 
does not stop with this single declaration. It 



naturally, and by a well-established law, un- 
hinges the whole morality of the man ; it warps 
his intellect and inflames his soul with bewilder- 
ing passions, with defiance to the simplest truth and 
plainest fact, and with vindictive hatred toward 
those who cannot agree with him. It is a fearful 
thing to become the defiant idolater of wrong. 
Slavery, and the consequent separation from the 
rest of men, begot pride in the leading men of the 
South — absurdly even pretending to be of a diff'er- 
ent and better race. Pride begot bitter and 
venomous hatred, and this bitter hatred, coupled 
with the love of owning men as things, begot at 
last a hatred of that which distinguishes the race 
to which we belong more than aught else — the 
striving for and love of liberty. 

Tliere is no room, then, for pacifying argu- 
ments with such men in arms against us, against 
their duty, their country, their very civilization. 
All that remains for the present is the question, 
Who shall be the victor? 

It is for all these reasons which have been 
stated that we pledge ourselves anew, in un- 
wavering loyalty, to stand by and support the 
government in all its efi^orts to suppress the 
rebellion, and to spare no endeavor to maintain, 
unimpaired, the national unity, both in principle 
and territorial boundary. 

We will support the government, and call on it 
with a united voice to use greater and greater 
energy, as the contest may stfem to draw to a 
close ; so that whatever advantages we may gain, 
we may pursue them with increasing efficiency, 
and to bring every one in the military or civil 
service that may be slow in the performance of 
his duty to a quick and efficient account. 

We approve of tlie Conscription Act, and will 
give our loyal aid in its being carried out, when- 
ever the government shall consider the increase 
of our army necessary ; and we believe that the 
energy of the government should be plainly 
shown by retaliatory measures, in checking the 
savage brutalities committed by the enemy 
against our men in arms, or unarmed citizens, 
when they fall into their hands. 

We declare that slavery, the poisonous root of 
this war, ought to be compressed within its nar- 
rowest feasible limits, with a view to its speedy 
extinction. 

We declare that this is no question of politics, 
but one of patriotism; and we hold every one to 
be a traitor to his country that works or speaks 
in favor of our criminal enemies, directly or in- 
directly, whether his oft'ence be such that the law 
can overtake him or not. 

We declare our inmost abhorence of the seiret 
societies which exist among us in favor of the re- 
bellious enemy, and that we will denounce every 
participator in these nefarious societies, whenever 
known to us. We believe publicity the very ba- 
sis of liberty. 

We pledge our fullest support of the govern- 
ment in every measure which it shall deem fiit to 
adopt against unfriendly and mischievous neutral- 
ity ; and we call upon it, as citizens that have the 
right and duty to call for protection on their own 
government, to adopt the speediest possible 
measure to that important end. 

We loyally support our government in its dec- 
larations and measures against all and every at- 
tempt of mediation, and armed or unarmed inter- 
ference in our civil war. 



10 



"We solemnly declare that we ■will resist every 
partition of any portion of our country to the 
last extremity, whether this partition should be 
brought about l)y rebellious or treasonable citi- 
zens of our own, or by foreign powers, in the way 
that Poland was torn to pieces. 

We pronounce every foreign minister accredited 
to our government,who tampers with our enemies, 
and holds covert intercourse with disloyal men 
among us, as failing in his duty toward us and 
towai-d his own people, and we await with atten- 
tion the action of our government regard- 
ing the recent and surprising breach of this 
duty. 

And we call upon every American, be he such 
by birth or choice, to join the loyal movement of 
these National Leagues, which is naught else than 
to join and follow our beckoning flag, and to 
adopt for his device : 

OUR COUNTRY. 



LETTEE 

To Messes. John Bkight, John Stuart Mill, 
Richard Cobben, Newman Hall, E. B. Cairnes, 
Edward Dicey, and ouu other friends in 
England. 

Adopted at the Inavgural Mans Meeting of the 
Loyal National League, on- the Sumter Anni- 
versary at Union Square, in the city of New 
York, April Uth, 1863. 

Deeply hated and loudly maligned by the ene- 
mies of free institutions, the loyal citizens of the 
United States of America turn with all the more 
pleasure and gratitude to tlieir European friends, 
to those fearless and far-sighted men whom 
neither the scowl of the threatening tyrant, nor 
the zeal of their fellow-countrymen advising in 
justice, has been able to move from their stead- 
fast principles. To you especially, our English 
advocates, we look with peculiar pleasure, on 
your own account as well as ours, feeling that 
your support is not less honorable and advanta- 
geous to yourselves than gratifying and encour- 
aging to us. For we do not regard ourselves as 
suppliants for the charity of your favor in a cause 
foreign to your principles and interests, but as 
brothers appeailing to brothers who are waging, 
though under different circumstances, the same 
battle for law, liberty and truth. 

We, the citizens of the United States of Amer- 
ica, are fighting for two objects: 

First. To prove that we are a nation and a 
government, not a fortuitous assemblage of petty 
states loosely connected by a precarious league ; 
and that we have the same right as all other gov- 
ernments to resist and suppress insurrection and 
conspiracy. By that instinct of self-preservation 
which is pi'overbially the first law of nature, and 
which holds good for nations as well as for indi- 
viduals, we also claim to be guided. 

Secondly. To arrest the progress of a barbariz- 
ing institution, which, originallj'^ forced upon us 
by the mother country, and, fostered by an unfor- 
tunate combination of circumstances, was threat- 
ening to overrule the wliole national policy, ex- 
ternal and internal, and to reduce the majority 
of our population to a state of political servitude; 
an institution which begins by imposing ignorance 



on the black, and finishes by encouraging igno- 
rance in the white, as the educational statistics 
of the Free and Slave States most clearly show. 

Both these objects have been scandalously mis- 
represented in your country by men, too, who 
have not the excuse of ignorance to offer for 
their errors. 

Persons pretending to be much better acquaint- 
ed with our Constitution than the founders of it 
were, have formed a theory of our government 
according to their own wishes. They have de- 
nounced it as a " rope of sand," without strength 
or Cohesion, and, when it has demonstrated its 
vitality and capacity to assert its rights, they cry 
out against it as an usurpation and a tyranny, 
though it is notorious that no European govern- 
ment in a similar strait has ever shrunk from 
measures at least as stringent. 

Even more flagrant are the bad faith and soph- 
istry manifested in reference to the second branch 
of our struggle. It is at first denied that slavery 
had anything to do with the war; and the enact- 
ment of a tariff subsequently to the breaking out 
of the insurrection was actually assigned as the 
cause of that insurrection. When the falsity of 
this statement became so glaring that its very 
authors were ashamed to urge it longer, they 
seized on the President's Proclamation, and en- 
deavored to attach to it this paradox: "The 
President abolishes slavery where he cannot reach 
it, and leaves it alone where he can — thus show- 
ing his insincerity." 

Rarely in the annals of mankind has a more 
insincere attempt been made to fasten insincerity 
upon others. The founders of our government 
had been most careful to keep slavery out of the 
peaceful jurisdiction of the Constitution. The 
Pi'esident had, therefore, no right to meddle with 
slavery in those States where the* Constitution 
was in force. It is only in those where it had 
been overturned and put in abeyance by the con- 
spirators that he could decree emancipation as a 
war measure. 

But further — and in this suppressio veri the 
injustice of our calumniators is more strikingly 
manifest — even before proclaiming emancipation 
in the insurgent States, the President strongly 
recommended emancipation, with Government 
aid, in the Border States; and bills for carrying out 
his recommendation in Missouri and Maryland 
were on the point of passing the last Congress. 
They were, indeed, defeated at the last moment 
by factious opposition ; but, besides this proof of 
intention, has nothing actually been done ? The 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
the first serious and effective treaty with Great 
Britain to put down the slave-trade, the recep- 
tion of a Haytian minister at the Capitol, the 
recognition of black men as citizens of the United 
States, — are all these to count for nothing ? Do 
they afford no proofs of the Government's sin- 
cerity ? Finally, the exclusion of slavery from 
the Territories of the United States, which was 
the cardinal principle involved in the Presiden- 
tiiil election, has it not been literally carried out? 
From these shameless detractors we gladly 
turn to you who have, from the first, perceived 
and maintained that our cause is the cause of 
freedom, humanity and progress, not only in the 
Western ^Hemisphere, but throughout the civil- 
ized world. Tlie friends of tyranny, the enemies 
of the people and of liberal institutions, are 



11 



■everywhere rejoicing ia the anticipation of our 
ruin, both from their abstract hatred of the prin- 
ciples wliich we represent, and from the practical 
assistance which our overthrow would give them 
in their designs at home. That our cause is the 
cause of liberty and progress will be made clear 
by examining the only possible solutions of the 
present conflict. These are three: 

First, that the Government will succeed by 
force of arms in re-establishing its authority^ over 
those portions of the insurgent States which it 
lias not yet been able to reoccupy. 

Second, that through the treachery or faint- 
heartedness of a portion of the northern popula- 
tion, the reverse will take place; the South will 
conquer the North by negotiation, if not actually 
in the battle-field, and succeed to the control of 
the National Government, retaining the free 
States, or a portion of them, as subject depend- 
encies. 

TIdrd, that the so-called Confederate States 
will succeed in establishing a separate govern- 
ment without making further conquests from the 
Union or acquiring control over it. 

These, we repeat it, are the only three solu- 
tions possible ; for that on which our foreign ene- 
mies are accustomed to dwell with malignant 
complacency, the comminution of our country 
into a multiplicity of fragments, would be but a 
slower and less direct way of arriving at the 
second result. 

Now, what would be the respective consequen- 
ces to the world of these three solutions? 

Throughout its whole existence, up to the time of 
the present civil war, the United States govern- 
ment was a singularly peaceful and unmilitary 
one. Its army was smaller than that of a second- 
rate German Duchy ; its war marine as small as 
its commercial marine was large. It had never 
pui'sued an aggressive or interfering policy, any 
attempts in that direction being -notoriously and 
solely the work of that very gang of conspira- 
tors who have now kindled the flames of civil 
war. If it now succeeds in subduing the insur- 
rection, it will naturally continue to maintain 
only such land forces as may sufiice to preserve 
tranquillity within its borders, and such squad- 
rons as will secure it from the fear of foreign in- 
vasion. But suppose the slaveholding South to 
obtain the masteiy over all this vast territory 
and wield the resources of it. In the first place, 
no man of ordinary sense and information doubts 
that the " confederation " would be rapidly con- 
solidated into a very strong government, either 
an autocratic monarchy or an oligarchy ; indeed, 
•the latter may be said to exist already. The 
leaders of the movement have themselves repeat- 
edly acknowledged this. The wasteful and ex- 
haustive nature of slave cultivation soon pro- 
duces a demand for fresh soil ; hence such a com- 
munity is necessarily expansive. Although this 
expansive tendency was sufficiently manifest to 
inspire other governments and nations with well 
founded apprehension, still our free majority 
acted as a constant drag upoaipit, till the leading 
oligarchs, impatient of the restraint, essayed to 
rid themselves of it by the extremity of violence. 
Give them the supremacy, and they would have 
strength and singleness of purpose to overrun 
any of their neighbors at will. The combined 
resources of all sections would soon furnish them an 
army greater than that of France, a navy supe- 



rior to that of England. Moreover, war would 
be the simplest method of occupying the po6r 
whites at the South and the dependent whites at 
the North. Thus the great slaveholding empire 
of North America would be at the same time 
more inclined to and more capable of aggression 
and conquest than any other nation existing. 
We are, indeed, aware that an attempt has been 
made to convict us and some of you whom we 
address of inconsistency in this matter. If, it is 
asked, slave cultivation impoverishes the soil, if 
the presence of slavery debases the non-slave- 
holding white, how can a government containing 
these elements of weakness be strong for attack 
and dangerous to its neighbors? But there is 
really no incompatibility whatever in the two 
things. The very qualities of an arbitrary gov- 
ernment which render it most injurious at home, 
are often those which render it most formidable 
abroad. Its comparative unfitness for foreign 
conquest is one of the beauties of a constitutional 
government. Was the Empire of the first Na- 
poleon any the less the terror of Europe because 
it oppressed and impoverished France? It is be- 
cause slavery exhausts the old soils that it must 
conquer new ones; it is because it deprives the 
masses of their rights that it must keep them 
busy at war. 

It ia supposed, however (and we are not igno- 
rant that our friends.as well as our enemies abroad 
are to be found taking this view of the issue), 
that a boundary line might be adjusted on terms 
safe and honorable to the North, and the two rival 
communities, becoming separate nations, might 
go on side by side, counterpoising each other af- 
ter the fashion of that most expensive, but, per- 
haps necessary, " balance of power" in vogue on 
your side of the Atlantic. Suppose such an al- 
most impossible boundary to be drawn: this 
would be a less evil to humanity, but still a 
great one. The aggressive tendencies of the 
slaveholding power under an "independent," 
but by no means free, government, would be par- 
tially checked by the proximity of a Northern 
Democracy, but not entirely checked, much less 
eradicated. There would be the same necessity 
for new land, and the same difficulty in keeping 
the poorer class of whites quiet. There would 
be a constant tendency to war in one or the oth- 
er direction. If the Northern Union were assailed, 
the blockade and all other inconveniences of the 
present war would be at once renewed. If an- 
other attempt were made to carry out the dream ■ 
of the ffoldeti circle, by invading Mexico or the 
West Indies, whether this were done with the 
connivance or against the consent of any Conti- 
nental powers, would it be for the interest of 
England, of freedom, .or of humanity ? Surely 
not. 

And now, what do we expect of England ? 
What have we a right to expect of England ? for 
here again we are accused of inconsistency in 
repelling mediation and, at the same time, invit- 
ing aid. We want that moral intervention 
which was so efficacious in the case of Italy. 
We ask that England, who has for long years 
professed her attachment to law and liberty, 
should not look with favor on the attempt to es- 
tablish an insurgent confederacy upon the two 
cornerstones of secession (which is but another 
name for lawlessness) and slavery. We believe 
that, had the governments of western Europe de- 



12 



dared from tlie first, officially or semi-officially, 
their unwillingness to see the success of such an 
attempt at government — presided over too by 
the inventor and founder of repudiation — and 
had the majority of the press and the influential 
classes followed in the same path, the insur- 
rection would have died out by this time; for 
nothing has sustained it so much as the indirect 
aid received from Europe and the constant hope 
of greater and more direct assistance. We are 
sure that ordinary care and comity would have 
prevented the fitting out of privateers fromj'our 
ports to prey on our commerce. 

In every free country tliere must be differences, 
and great differences, of opinion ; but some, 
at least, of the acts alluded to lie completely be- 
yond that domain. Whether our Union can be 
restored in its integrity, may for you be matter 
of opinion. Aiding the insurgents against the 
government is, for every one who does it, a mat- 
ter of will. 

You English are proud of your reputation as a 
law-abiding people ; can you encourage the 
most unprovoked and unjustifiable rebellion that 
the world lias ever witnessed? You wish to ele- 
vate the very lowest class of workmen ; can you 
patronize the system which reduces them to the 
legal status of the brute? You wish to educate 
the classes next in the scale ; can you sympathize 
with the system which prefers to keep them in 
ignorance? Your aristocracy claim to be learned, 
refined and humane; does theniagie of a name so 
blind them that thej' would gladly see a whole 
continent deliveied over to the lusts of an oli- 
garchy, however illiterate, violent and sanguin- 
ary, so that it but be an oligarchy and not a 
democracy ? 

Trusting that the good sense and virtue of the 
English nation, aided by such advisers as you, 
will soon answer these questions in the nega- 
tive, we remain, with renewed thanks and sympa- 
thy, your friends and associates in the cause of 
liberty and truth. 



LETTEE 

To Count Agenor Gasparin, Prof. Edouard La- 

BOULAYE, AUGUSTIN CoCHIN, AND OTBER FRIENDS 

OF America in France. 
Adopted at the Meeting of the Loyal National 
League at the Sumter Anniversary at the 
great Mass Meeting in Union. Square, New York, 
on the nth of April, 1863. 

Gentlemen, — The Loyal JNational Leaffue in 
the city of New York, ah organization having 
its ramifications throughout all the loyal Slates, 
and bound together by the simple pledge " to 
maintain unimpaired tlie national unity, both in 
idea and territorial boundary," have charged us 
with the grateful duty, in their name, to thank 
you for your disinterested and distinguished 
services, in behalf of the American People and 
Union, in France. 

Amidst the general misapprehension and be- 
wilderment of the public ojanion of Europe, you 
have clearly understood and appreciated the 
nature of the struggle in which the People and 
Government of the United States are in- 
volved ; and your pertinent and impressive 



word.-} have traversed the ocean and have 
inspired us with renewed hope and courage. In 
the heart of the American people, by the side of 
Washington, stands enshrined for ever that 
ancient form of French S3'mpathy, generosity and 
v.ilor, the Marquis de LaFayette. He and his 
companions, who stood by our fathers in their 
great struggle against arbitrary power, in the 
popular imagination have always represented 
France. Is it strange, then, that their children, 
treacherously assailed in the very citadel of their 
national life by a far more pernicious and des- 
potic power, should listen with reluctant ear to 
the voices that would persuade them that France 
had lost the clew of her own great career, and, 
repudiating the traditions of her own glory, con- 
spired with such a power to overthrow freedom, 
the rights of human nature and Christian civili- 
zation in America ? The messages you have sent 
us have cleared away the doubts that weighed 
upon our hearts, and prove to us that, notwith- 
standing the persistent efforts of the advocates of 
the slave power to conceal its deformities and to 
misrepresent the true issues involved in its 
attack upon American nationality, the en- 
lightened and liberal mind of France penetrates 
the whole mass of subterfuges, and sees clearly 
on which side lies truth and justice. 

We esteem so much the more highly your en- 
lightened and just appreciation of the cause for 
which we contend, inasmuch as we cannot shut 
our eyes to the fact that many things in the 
manner of conducting it must seem anomalous 
to an European observer, unacqainted with the 
more intimate circumstances and principles 
peculiar to our American system and life. 

The supreme necessity of a government found- 
ed in the will of the people is, to hold their 
public servants to the most exact and inexorable 
obedience to that will, as expressed in the 
written constitution — for that is the fundamental 
law. To permit any assumption of power on 
the part of any one or all of these servants, 
under the pressure of any exigency, would be to 
open the door to endless ambitions, and to iocur 
the hazards of the most fatal consequences. 
Doubtless the founders of our national system 
of government intended, as far as possible, to 
ignore the whole subject of slavery, to leave its 
interests entirely in the hands of the authorities 
of the several States in which it already existed, 
and to keep them wholly without the jurisdic- 
tion of the national constitution. For the sake of 
UNION, they found it necessary to recognize it as 
an existing, but, as they believed, temporary /ac<, 
but never as a right; and so, from the period of 
the adoption of the national constitution, the 
idea of the complete independence of slavery of 
the national government had been inculcated 
and strengthened. Its masters called it an in- 
stitution, to put it upon a level with the funda- 
mental law — the constitution itself. They 
moreover, at an early day, possessed themselves 
of its supreme jur^/i-ial powers, and had thus in 
their own hands ifft interpretation. They pro- 
ceeded to wrest its meauing to their own 
purposes, and to make of it an instrument for 
the perpetuiil maintenance of human bondage, 
instead of giving to it the true sense of its 
fraineis — a charter of liberty for all men. By 
allying themselves with a prevalent democracy 
at the North, the}' were able to instill and estab- 



13 



liih these interpretations, not only in the popu- 
hir mind of the whole country, but in much of 
the legislation of the national government. 
And if, with all this, you will bear in mind 
that the constitution, to the American citizen, 
stands in the place of the person of the sove- 
reign in the monarchical systems of Europe; 
that to it he owes paramount allegiance ; that it 
is the supreme object of his loyalty, 5^ou will be 
the better able to understand the apparent 
hesitancy of the national government to strike 
at the existence of slavery, even in resistance of 
its own blow at the nation's life. 

To destroy slavery, the acknowledged cause of 
the war, and at the same time to preserve intact 
the wise inhibitions of the constitution, accord- 
ing to the settled construction of that instru- 
ment, has been from the beginning a question of 
no little practical difficulty to the national ad- 
ministration. To carry on the war, it must have 
the hearty support of the country. To be sure 
of this suppoft, it must not outrun preconceived 
public opinion. To enlighten and correct public 
opinion, time is necessary. Let us assure you 
that your own generous efforts to enlighten the 
public opinion of Europe have effected much to 
the same end here, and that the whole loyal 
country is fast coming up to the just and only 
solution of the great question in issue. The 
President's recent proclamation of emancipation 
is a proof; for while it by no means completes the 
work, even in idea, it is, at least, a great step in 
the right direction. Issued under his constitu- 
tional powers as commander in-chief of the army 
and navy of the United States, and as a measure 
of war, its direct operation must of necessity be 
restricted to such districts of country as still 
remain in unsubdued rebellion ; but, indirectly, 
and as a ground oi right of freedom for the slave, 
its ecope is much wider and more important. In 
any view of it, it surely deserves the hearty sym- 
pathy and support of all the enlightened lovers 
of liberty and progress, rather than such captious 
and unworthy criticisms as that of the English 
minister. Lord John Russell is the minister of a 
constitutional goverimient ; he cannot be ignorant 
what rights of war a commander-in-chief may 
exei'cise ; he knows that the rights of war are 
restricted to the theati-e of the war, and that, 
under every constitutional government, power, in 
theorj' at least, is restricted to the exercise of 
rights. 

Another ground of popular misapprehension, 
on your side of the Atlantic, as to the true issues 
at stake in our struggle, may very naturally have 
arisen out of the fact that in all the revolutionary 
movements of modern Europe the insurgents 
have usually represented liberty, nationality 
and progress, while the governmentsrepresented, 
if not arbitrary power, at best aiithoriti/ only, 
and the status quo. Here, on the contrary, 
exactly the reverse is true. Here the insurrec- 
tion represents a power founded upon the utter 
annihilation of the commonest human rights — a 
boasted rcpuiliation of all ideas of liberty and 
progress ; Avhile the national government, 
founded upon the principles of the Declaration 
of Independence of 1776, '" the self-evident truths 
that all men are created equal, and are endowed 
by their Creator with the inalienable rights to 
life, liberty, and the puisuit of happiness," wars 
only to preserve the institutions in which these 



rights are embodied, and under which alono 
they can be maintained in the present exigency. 
But, with all this, it is not difficult to see bow 
the European mercenaries of the slave power, 
skillfully concealing the true character of its 
atrocious attempt to overthrow free government 
in America, and stealing the battle-cry of the 
oppressed nationalities of the Old World — 
"National Independence" — should have beea 
able to bewilder the public opinion, and draw t® 
its shameless cause much of the sympathy of the 
popular heart, of Europe,, even of France. 

Assuming, for the occasion, the part of the op- 
pressed, these frenzied devastators of a whole 
race of men have not hesitated to charge the 
loyal people of the North and the National Gov- 
ernment with fighting only for dominion. "You 
fight," say they, " not for freedom, not for the 
emancipation of the enslaved, but only for the 
maintenance of power." The slightest examina- 
tion will prove how unfounded and nefarious is 
this charge. The whole controversy in the elec- 
tion of Lincoln turned upon the question of the 
limitation of the area of slavery. The Republi- 
can party, who made him their candidate and 
carried him into office, planted themselves upon 
the simple groimd of limiting slavery to the 
lines within which it already existed. This at- 
tempt to resist the arrogant demand of the slave 
masters to appropriate to their own use the 
whole of the still unoccupied domain of the na- 
tion, constituted the whole offense of the people 
of the United States in that election. They sim- 
ply said to them. The national domain and the 
uitional government belong to us, as well as you. 
Liberty is 0!<r lieritage, and henceforth we mean 
that it shall have its rights in both government 
and domain. 

No other ground of offense than this had the 
slave power for tearing asunder our national 
unity, no other excuse for the unparalleled crime 
of beginning the present war to destroy the na- 
tional life. These facts are patent to the whole 
world. Who, then, is it that is fighting for do- 
minion? 

We do not mean to say that the diabolical 
exigencies of slavery do not necessitate the illim- 
itable appropriation of territory and the unre- 
strained exercise of dominion which is demanded 
for it. Doubtless, like every other system of au- 
thority founded in mere power without right, 
slavery requires that its masters should be mas- 
ters also ot the law-making power of the gov- 
ernment under which it exists. 

Let the friends of the slave power in Europe 
have the benefit of the admission that the exi- 
gencies of a slave society demand for its main- 
tenance universal dominion, and the ultimate in- 
vasion of all the territories that may, at any giv- 
en period, lie adjacent to its boundaries. Thence, 
not only all the territories of the Union, but 
when these. should be absorbed, all Mexico and 
the South Americiin States. Its inevitable in- 
stincts have already made themselves manifestia 
the various predatory expeditions that, from 
time to time, have been set on foot at the South. 
These were but a kind of offshoot of its exuber- 
ant and monstrous vitality ; but they serve to 
ilhislrate the nature of the slave power. 

In stripping from it the veil of sophistries with 
which it has sought to conceal its enormities, 
you have not only rendered a great service to 



It 



diir uational cause, but to the cause of public 
justice and Christian civilization everywhere. 
For the cause of the Union is the cause of human- 
ity, unless it is to be taken for granted that the 
public morality of Christendom requires that the 
United States should abdicate the character of a 
nation in the interests of the power which as- 
sails it. If the ti'ue character of this power 
could be clearly presented to the public con- 
science of France, we should feai'lessly rest our- 
selves upon its verdict. As it is, we cannot so 
much blame the general'misappreheusion, which 
has caused it not only to be tolerated, but to be 
clothed with a certain popular esteem, as well as 
■W^ith certain public rights, by the peoples and 
authorities of Europe, when we remember that 
dven here, in the more immediate arena of iis 
crimes, the peculiar character of American slav- 
ery, has not hitherto been thoroughly appre- 
hended by the popular mind. 

Simple Slavery is not a modern form of in- 
humanity. The annals of our race are full of the 
groans of the enslaved. But hitherto slavery 
has founded itself upon power — has rested its 
claim, in the might of the strongest — has been 
content to enjoy its proiits, in the category of 
things without remedy. In no age of human 
history, until now, has it ever been attempted to 
clothe slavery with the Sacredness of Right. 
The distinguished infamy belongs to the founders 
of the southern confederacy, of setting up a gov 
ernment, whose corner stone, to use the language 
of one of the most notorious of them, Alex. H. 
Stephens, is "the right of the superior race to 
enslave the inferior." "This right," he says, 
" settles forever the agitating question of Ameri- 
can Slavery," and boastfully declares that " our 
new government is the first in the history of the 
world based upon this great phj'sicai, philosoph- 
ical and moral truth." 

The announcement is a sufficient notice to all 
the world. The establishment of the Southern 
Confederacy is not alone the setting up of a new 
power upon the earth, but the introduction into 
the public law of the civilized world of a new 
RIGHT ; and into the family of nations of a nkw 

FORM OF CIVILIZATION. 

It is in this aspect of our struggle that it be- 
comes of the deepest interest to the people of 
France and to all men. An attempt to supplant 
the laws founded by the Divine Master of these 
Christian centuries by a new code, derived from 
the reeking shambles of King Dahomey, is an 
enterprise in which the people of the United 
States are not alone interested. 

Is it possible that the idea* can be anywhere 
entertained that the glory of France, or the 
permanent well-being of her people, require its 
successful prosecution on this continent? Will 
she aid in the overthrow of a nationality, found- 
ed upon the principles of her own great revolu- 
tion, and cemented by the blood of her noblest 
sons, for the sake of any profits to be derived 
from the meretricious embrace of suyh an ally ? 
At the south they make a commerce out of their 
own blood when it flows under a colored skin. 
That, doubtless, is in accordance with the new 
confederate code. For the sake of national recog- 
nition the new confederate power wonld allow 
any respecl able nation to participate in all the 
benefits of iliis commerce as well as of the trade 



in cotton. We cannot be persuaded that France 
will be the first to take advantage of the offer. 

If at the instant of the slave master's attempt 
to force the new right into the public code of the 
Christian world, the governments of France and 
England had promptly refiised to accept it — if 
they had simply declared that no State founded 
upon any such atrocious right should ever be ad- 
mitted into the family of Christian nations — the 
question would long ago have been settled. 
There would have been no idle and starving 
spinners and weavers in Lancashire, no unem- 
ployed and famishing workpeople at Rouen and 
Mulhouse. Even now these governments have it 
in their power to say the word that shall at once 
put an end to the pernicious hopes that prolong 
our disasters, and the continually more and more 
aggravated sufferings of their own peoples. 

As for us, we know now that the issues at stake, 
in the war which we wage, belong to humanity ; 
we know, also, how momentous they are, and that 
the great question is not as to the (Jay or month 
or year in which peace shall be declared, but as 
to the hour in which the impious right organized 
by the slave power into a Confederacy of States 
shall be utterly overthrown and extinguished. 
If we doubted as to our duty in such a crisis, we 
should turn to one of you and learn that " a 
People accustomed to liberty should risk their 
last man and their last dollar to keep the inherit- 
ance of their fathers" — "that the dismember- 
ment of the Union — the rending assunder of the 
country — would be degradation without remedy." 

We would by no means speak boastfully of the 
military successes of the armies of the Union. A 
singularly peaceful people, like those of the 
Northern States, do not learn war in a day Be- 
sides, this is emphatically a war of ideas, and 
they take time to put on their armor and march. 
Still, an inspection of the map of the insurgent 
States will show you that some portion of every 
one of them is already in the occupation of our 
military forces. Let us assure you that the pres- 
ent condition of these forces, both physically and 
morally, never was as good as at this hour, nor 
their future success so well assured. At the same 
time let us further assure you that the resources 
of the people of the loyal States, both in men and 
money, remain unexhausted, and still adequate, 
we believe, to the work which Providence has 
committed to their hands. 

And again thanking you for the many just and 
inspiring words you have spoken, in behalf of 
the great cause for which we fight, let us express 
to you our hope and our belief that when the end 
of our battle shall come neither you nor we shall 
be made ashamed by the result. 

With sentiments of the highest individual es- 
teem, we remain, respectfully, yours, <fec. 



STAIVB TSo. 8. 

Speeches by Gov. IVIorton o( lud., Oeu. A. J. 

Hamilton, Jas. HI. Scovel. 

This stand was erected on the south-west side of 

the Park, and was decorated with banners bearing 

the following inscriptions: 

" Loyal Notional League." 
" A common Union to maiutaiu the power, glory, und integ- 
rity of the Nation." 
" No compromise with traitors; No neutrals in war; Tiie 

Flag of our Union shall float over Snmter. " 

" Loyal National League, pledged to maintain the nationality ;" 

" No fire in the rear." 



15 



At abont 4 J o'clock, after salutes of artillery and 
nartial music, the meeting -was called to order by 
K. B. MiNTURN, esq., and prayer was offered by 
ibe Eev. J. T. Duryea. 

Mr. James A. Eoosevelt read the call for the 
meeting and the list of Vice-Presidents and Secreta- 
ries. 

Mr. Isaac H. Bailey was called upon to read the 
Address, but would not detain the meeting by read- 
ing it, on account of its length, saying that it was in 
accordance with the spirit which had called this 
meeting together; that it would be published by the 
press, and that the time would be fully occupied by 
able and interesting speakers. 

The resolutions were read by John Jay, jr., and 
were adopted by acclamation. 

The Chairman introduced to the meeting Egbert 
CuMMiNGS, 14 years of age, cabin boy on board the 
Harriet Lane, and one of the few survivors of her 
last eisgagement. He was greeted with loud ap- 
plause, and modestly bowing, retired. 
SPEECH OF GOV. O. P. MORTON OF INDIANA. 

Gov. Morton of Indiana was introduced by the 
President, and said : 

Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens : As yon 
have learned by the call, this meeting is assembled 
for the purpose of commemorating the attack upon 
Fort Sumter. The inquiry may present itself to 
your minds. For what are we commemorating the 
attack upon Fort Sumter? Before that time the 
American people had been paralyzed by divisions 
into parties. The organization throughout the South- 
ern States of a powerful Eebel army, the seizure of 
forts, dockyards, arsenals, mints, ships of war, and 
every species of public property, had proved una- 
vailing to arouse the nation, which wa.'i, like a man 
with a dreadful nightmare, struggling to awake, but 
yet unable to do so. But when the echo of the first 
gun was heard in the night, coming like an earth- 
quake, the nation arose from its bed, and every man 
rushed into the open air to inquire what was the 
cause of the alarm, ready to go to the rescue if uec- 
essary. The firing upon Fort Sumter was an evil 
hour for the Eebellion; for it had the effect, for the 
time, to close up the ranks arnoug the people, to heal 
up the dissensions, and to bring us together as with 
a mighty compression. The attack upon Fort Sum- 
ter had its effect to unite the American people. May 
its speedy recapture and restoration again draw us 
together by the strong bonds of patriotic fraternity. 
[Applause.] Time passed on, and the patriotism and 
selt-sacnfidng devotion of many of our people, stim- 
ulated by the great Union meetings after 
the fall of Sumter, wore out; and the dem- 
agogues who had been driven into their 
kennela by the universal outburst of patriot- 
ism came forth and began to do the devilish 
work of attempting to produce divisions at the 
North so as to paralyze the arm of the Grovernment. 
I believe that we shall come together again. I be- 
lieve that the work of the demagogues will be short- 
lived, I believe that the good sense and the ardent 
affection which must still be found in the hearts of 
an overwhelming majority of our people, will again 
rally us all around the standard of our country, and 
uphold it until it shall be borne in triumph to final 
victory. We are engaged in a war, the most terrible 
in history, a civil war. The first question which I 
shall ask to-day, and it may seem somewhat element- 
ary to yon, for your minds are doubtless made up 
upon the subject, is this: What brought this war 
upon the country ? who are its authors'/ My excuse 
for asking this question and answering it, is based 
upon the fact that there are men in the city of New- 
York, and all over the loyal North, who are attempt- 



ing to persuade the people that this war was made 
by Mr. Lincoln's Administration; that it is an Aboli- 
tion war, igotten up for the purpose of effecting the 
emancipation of the slaves, and to promote negro 
equality. The foundations of the Eebellion were 
laid more than thirty years ago. Toe first develop- 
ment of it was in the nullification movement of South 
Carolina upon the pretense of a tariff which they de- 
clared to be unconstitutional and oppressive. That 
Eebellion was promptly suppressed by the iron will 
and strong band of Gen. Jackson. And the predic- 
tion was then made by Gen. Jackson himself, that 
the next development would be upon the pretense of 
the Slavery question. From that time until the 
breaking out of this Eebellion, preparations were 
constantly made. Men of the Calhoun school of 
politics, at first almost wholly confined to the State 
of South Carolina, but afterward spreading through 
most of the Southern States, and afterward extend- 
• ing the poison even into the Northern States, were 
laboring to lay the foundations for the great Eebel- 
lion with which we are now struggling. They were 
willing to postpone the revolt so long as they could 
control the Government through the instrumentality 
of party. But when, shortly after the Administra- 
tion of President Buchanan commenced, it became 
apparent that the South could not longer control the 
Government as before, preparations were systema- 
tically and industriously made throughout that en- 
tire Administration to bring the Eebellion on. It 
was the business of Mr. Floyd, from tbe very first, 
so to dispose of all the arms and munitions of war 
that when the hour came the Eebels could place 
their hands upon them; and we know the}' did, the 
greater portion of them. Mr. Toucey, the Secretary 
of the Navy, allowed the navy to become dilapidated 
and dismantled; and when the hour for action came, 
it was dispersed upon all the oceans, and was of no 
value to us. It was the business of Mr. Cobb, the 
Secretary of the Treasury, to impoverish the Treasury 
of the Ucion, and to bring dishonor upon its credit, 
I tiave been ioforoied since 1 have been in this city, 
of a fact which I believe is not generally 
known. Mr. Cobb deliberately made arrangements 
to allow the interest on the public debt to go nn- ' 
paid, so that the coupons should be protested for 
non-payment, la order to affect our credit abroad; 
and this dishonor to the national credit was only 
avoided by some banks of the City of New-York 
cominsr forward and voluntarily paying the interest 
upon the national debt to preserve the national 
credit. [Applause.] Immediately after the election 
of Mr. Lincoln, South Carolina made her arrange- 
ments to go out of the Union. She was followed by 
one State after another, until eight or nine had gone 
througb the forms of Secession, before Mr. Lincoln's 
inauguration. At the time of his inauguration the 
Eebels had an army of more than 30,000 men in tbe 
field, trained, armed, and ready for battle. Up to 
that, lime we had done nothing. Mr. Buchanan 
had proclaimed to the world that the Government 
had no power for self-preservation. He had de- 
clared that tbe Government could not take a single 
military step to preserve its life from the robbers 
that had taken it by the throat. Their arrange- 
ments had been made under his eye, throughout his 
entire Administration; and we can ouly exonerate 
hiai from ihe charge of a knowledge of the plans of 
the Eebtls and a complicity with them, by making 
tbe most liberal concessions in favor of his imbe- 
cility. [Laughter.] Our little army of 15,000 
men had been scattered to the lour winds. 
There were not 200 men together in any one place, 
except the army of Gen. Twig^'S in Texas, whicli 
was most disgracefully surrendered, as you know 
it was intended it should be when it was niaced 
there. Preparations were made for the reduction of 
Fort Sumter. They had been going on for many 
weeks. They were made deliberately, openly, un- 
der the guns of that fortress. Those guns remained 
silent ; and after all the land batteries and floating 
batteries had been prepared and the hour was ripe, 
then the lire was opened upon Sumter, and our glo- 



lu 



rions flag was hauled down, and our gallant garrison 
was compelled to surrender to the enemy; and thus 
the war was begun. Need I ask you the question, 
then, Who made the war ? It was made by the 
Rebels; it was made by the Somh. Oar Govern- 
ment is standing on the defensive. It is defending 
its life; H is defending itself against the dismember- 
ment of its territory; it is struggiiag and lighiiog to 
prevent the dissolution of the Union. It is not a 
war which the Government has made, but a war 
forced upon the Government^a war which the Gov- 
ernment could not refuse to accept. The next ques- 
tion, then, for our consideration is, For what pur- 
pose did the South make this war ? For what pur- 
pose was this Rebellion brought upon the country 
with all its train of disasters ? What object had 
they in view 1 What had they to gain by ic ? One 
party to this war contends that there is no surh 
ihmg as an American people, an American natioi. ; 
that we are but an aggregation of some 34 petty t 
nationalities, united together in a partnership of 
interest and convenience, from which any one is 
at liberty to withdraw at pleasure. The other party 
to this war, to which I trust we all belong, con- 
tends that there is such a thing as an American 
■people, that there is a national unity [applause] ; 
that while we are divided into States for local and 
domestic government, while the States are divided 
into counties each having a government of its own, 
and while the counties are again divided into town- 
• ships, each having a township government of its 
own, yet the township belongs to the county, the 
county to the Ssate, and the State to one mighty in- 
dissoluble nation. [Applause.] The question recurs, 
Why did the South make this war, and seek to de- 
stroy this Government 'I You will be told, perhaps, 
by such a man as Fernando Wood [groans] — I beg 
your pardon for alluding to a subject whicn seems 
to be so repulsive to your feelings — but we are told 
by many men, North and South, that the war was 
forced upon the South to protect their rights under 
the ConKtitutioD ; that it was the iatention of Mr. 
Lincoln's Administration to aggress upon those 
rights, and to secare tliose consiitutional rights she 
commenced the war to destroy the Constitution it- 
self. The first official declaration which the Rebel 
Government ever made to the Courts of Europe, 
given by their first embassador to Lord John Rus- 
sell, was the statement that the war was not made 
by the South for any such purpose; that the South 
did pot fear that the Administration of Mr. 
Lincoln would trample upon their constitu- 
tional rights. I need then give no further 
answer to this pretense upon the part of 
Northern sympathizers. Then what was the war 
made for by them >. It was to establish a Govern- 
ment in which the institution of Slavery should not 
be simply recognized or tolerated, bat should be the 
great paramount of controlling interest, in which 
the elaveholding aristocracy should be the dominant 
or the governing class. The war was made for the 
purpose of overturning and uprooting the dem- 
ocratic principle and establishing the aristocratic 
principle. Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the 
Confederacy, who has given us the only commentary 
upon their ucw Constitution, declares in his speech 
at Milledgtville, that the South for the fiist time in 
the history of the world, had established a goveru- 
ment whose cbief corner-stone we,8 the inetitutioa 
of Slavery. It was a matter of boastiug that this 
had occuiied for iha first time in the histoiy of civil- 
ization. [A voice, " For the last time, too."] It 
was brought forth as an evidence of remarkable pro- 
gress, lie boasted that they had' overturned iha 
principles upon which this Government had been 
lounded; that ihey had established a»Govetnment 
uoon principles directly the reverse of those which 
were Bet fortii in ihe Declaration of Indcpendeuce, 
and upon whic.i this Government was established. 
The great question preeeut iu all our luinds, and one 
which wo aie all trying to answer to our- 
selveij, 18 laa great question. How sball 
wa procure peace 1 How shall ibis war 



be ended ? It is said that there are three ways 
in which peace can be attained. The first is by coa- 
ceding the independence of the Rebel States, conced- 
ing the dissolution ot the Union, conceding the dis- 
memberment of oui- territory. [Voices, " Never."] 
The second is by procuring an armistice, then calling 
a National Convention, having the Rebel States rep- 
rAeuted in tnat Convention, and then propose to 
amend the Constitution, to make it satisfactory to 
the Rebels, and reconstruct the Union by turning 
out the six New-England States. ["Never."] The 
third is by suppresoing the Rebellion and conquering 
a peace. [Applause, and cries of "Ttiat's the 
way.' ] Let me consider very briefly the merits of 
these diflerent modes of obtaining peace. 

I. If you obtain peace by conceding the independ- 
ence of the Rebel States, then you must make up 
your minds to give up Kentucky, Missouri, Mary- 
land and Delaware. ["'Never."] We have been 
told by the Rebels, first and last, that they never 
would consent to a peace, except upon terms giving 
to them all the Slave States represented in the Rebel 
Congress. Each of these States has menibersin that 
body, and each is represented by a star upon the 
rebel flag. If you would, therefore, obtain peace 
by abandoning this war, and conceding their inde- 
pendence, you must make up your minds to give 
them those four States. If you do that, you must 
also give thtm up your National Capitol, which is 
between Maryland and Virginia, both of which 
would go with the South. "Tnat is the first conse- 
quence. I do not say it would be the worst, by any 
means, for we could build a new capito) upon better 
ground, and, I believe, in a better neighborhood. 
[Laughter.] The uexo consequence to flow from 
peace upon those terms, is tne surrender of the, 
mouth of the Mississippi River, and the control 
of that stream, thus making the Nor.h- Western 
States tributary to the Rebel Confederacy. The 
next consequence, flowing directly from that, 
would be to rdise up iu all the North-West- 
ern States, a powerful party in favor of im- 
mediate annexation to the Southern Confederacy. 
They would feel at once that the North- Western 
States, lying in the Mississippi Valley and upon the 
Ohio, are bound geographically, commercially and 
socially with the people of the South and South- 
west; and they would never consent to be sepa- 
rated from that political community that controls the 
mouth of the Mississippi River. This party woald 
be powerful from the first. It could no', at once 
carry this measure of annexation to the Soathom 
Confederacy, and would then resort to a claim 
for a NortU-Wpstern Confederacy, which would 
be but a preparatory and incipient measure; 
because after we shall have ' cut ourselves 
loose from the Atlantic States, we must have 
an outlet, and we should be driven to throw 
ourselves into the arms of the Southern Con- 
federacy to enable us to get out through the Gulf of 
Mexico. Atother consequence to flow from peace 
upon thesa terms would be the immediate estabbsh- 
m'ent of a Pacific Republic. California, Oregon, the 
Territory of Washington and all these feVritories 
separated from the Atlantic States by the range of 
the Rocky Mountains, would at once set up fos 
themselves, and with a much better show of reason 
than any other portion of the Republic. They are 
upon the Pacific slope. Their commerce is upon the 
Pacific Ocean. Their commerce is separated from 
ouis by the Rocky Mountains. And they would 
at once separate from us and set up a great Pacific 
Republic. No sensible man can believe that if the 
work of S'cespioa and disintegration shall be con- 
summated by the estaljlirshment of this independence 
of the present Rebel Sfaie!", it will stop there. No, 
it will go on until our country, once powerful, 
prosperous and glorious, will have become an utter 
wreck and ruiu. 

II. L>it me now consider briefly this second modo 
of obtaining power, by procuring an armistice, call- 
ing a National Convention, amending the Constita- 



17 



tiOD, BO as to make it satisfactory to the Rebels, ana 
reconstructing the Uaion by turning out the six 
New-England States. We know very well tbat the 
Rebels will not come back with all the Free States 
in the Uoioo. It would still be in the minority iu 
the Governmsnt, as taey are the minority in the 
popnliiioDs. To remove this difflculty, it is pro- 
posed to turn New- England out, so as to get South 
Carolina and the other Southern States in. We 
would then live in a Confederacy of twenty-eight 
States, of which fifteen would be Slave States and 
thirteen would be Free Sta'es. That would give 
the South a permanent majority iu the Senate of the 
Unioed Statea; for tbey would take care never again 
to admit another Free State into the Union. What 
then would be our condition ? What is the condi- 
tion of Ireland to England, of Poland to Russia, of 
Hungary to Austria ? Such would be our condition 
were we to consent to a new Confederacy con- 
structed upon these principles. Why is New-En- 
gland to be turned out ? What is lier offense for 
which she is to be expelled from the Union ? It is 
tbat she has loved Liberty too well and Slavery too 
little. [Applause.] To New-England more than to 
all other parts of the country together, do we owe 
this Revolutionary war, and all the mighty train of 
consequences that have followed it, so important to 
ourselves and to the world. Tde Rovolution had its 
origin in New-England, and New-England gave 
more soldiers than all the other States together, for 
the Tiurpose of carrying it on to a successful issue, 
ftl-issachuaetta gave over 75,000 men, while Sauth 
Uarolma gave a few hundred over 5,000. Yet the 
proposition is made to kick Massachusetts out, to 
coax Sauth Carolina to come iu. We are to turn 
out lo/al States in order to induce this viper to re- 
turn to nestle in our bosom. We will bring the 
viper back; but it will not be until after its fangs are 
extracted. This scheme is too dishonorable to be 
pursued; and yet this scheme u older than the war. 
It bus Its advocates in your city aud in all the 
Northern States. 1 dismiss it as a subject too repug- 
nant to our feelings to be longer presented to you. 
III. I come then to the last method of obtaining 
peace, by suppressing the Rebellion and conquering a 
peace. [AppLuse.] In the first place, allow me to 
consider very briefly the progress of the war. What 
progress have we made ? I know we are an im- 
patient people. We want great things accomplished 
in a very short period. We have failed properly to 
consider the magnitude of the Rebellion and I he dif- 
ficulties of the undertaking. When we shall have 
looked over the ground we shall find that our pro- 
gress after all has been highly satisfactory, and such 
as to give us the most confident hopes of success iu 
the future. We have secured Kentucky; we have 
secured Missouri; we have a great part of Arkansas; 
we have a great part of Louisiana; we have Mary- 
land; we have Delaware; we have a considerable 
part of old Virginia; a considerable part of North 
Carolina, and a large part of Tennessee. We have 
at this time more than half the Rebel territory and 
more than a third of all its population. The right 
to grumble is one of our prerogatives. We are a 
grumbling people. We grumble at the President. 
i have no doubt that the President has committed 
faults. He has been placed in a more trying and diffi- 
cult position than any Executive the nation ever had. 
The position of G-en. Washington was never more diffi- 
cult or more important than that of Abraham Lin- 
coln. If the President had not erred, under all these 
trying circumstances, it would have been more than 
human. You who are familiar with the history of 
our Revolution remember what bitter opposition 
was waged against Gen. Washinyton, almost 
throughout the war. You remember the csmpbtints 
they made of want of success, complaints of his 
tardiness, aud how from time to time the hearts of 
the people sank within them. But still they hell 
on, and victory fiually crowned our arms and blessed 
our cause. Tuere was still a confidence that took 
fast hold of the Hearts of the people at that time, of 
the integrity, the purity, the sound judgment of 



Gen. Washington. And I tell vou to-dav that the 
great overshadowing element in the character of 
Abraham Lincoln is his unimpeachable integrity. 
[Applause.] It is the confidence ttiat this nation 
has that he is an honest man, that he loves his coun- 
try, and that whatever he does he intends for the 
welfare of his country, that if he errs it is the er- 
ror of the head and not of the heart; and I con- 
gratulate the nation that in this great hour of trial 
we have for our President so honest and up- 
right a man as Abraham Lincoln. [Applause.] 
Tney complain of the Secretary of War. It is 
said that he is not doing his part well, and that 
many of the misfortunes of the war are to be attrib- 
uted to him. I doubt not he, too, has committed 
errors; but I have watched his course narrowly, I 
have had much to do with him in the administration 
of military affairs in Indiana, and I take great pleas- 
ure iu bearing testimony to his great abilities', and 
to his untiring devotion to the cause in which he is 
engaged. I tell you there is nothing haU-haarted 
about Edwin Stanton. His whole lieart is in the 
work, and he is devoting himself to it night aud day. 
I believe history will yet record his name upon one 
of its brightest and best pages. I may speak, too, 
with propriety, of Secretary Chase. He received 
the Treasury, as it came from the hands of Cobb, 
without a single grain in it. [Laughter.] It had 
been impoverisued by him purposely to paralyze the 
power of the Government to resist the Reoellion. 
Tbat was a part of the scheme, a part of the policy 
which characterized the whole Administration of 
Buchanan. Mr. Chase has resurrected the credit of 
the nation; and this fabric of the national credit 
never stood so high as at the present time. It is 
our boas'; that we have carried on the war up to 
this time without being compelled to call upon Eu- 
rope to furnish a single dollar, as has been correctly 
stated in one of the roioluiions you have just adopt- 
ed; and the prospect IS taat we shall carry on the 
War to the end, and crush out the Rebellion without 
calling upon Europe to lend us a single dollar for 
that purpose. Tlie plan of obtaining peace that I 
am in lavor of, is by crushing out the Rebellion. 
How are we to do that ? The great instrumentalities 
to be employed are the army and the navy. They are 
attemptiiii; by force aud violence to destroy this Gov- 
erumeut,and we must meet them by force aud violence. 
We must therefore maintain the army aud the 
navy in their efliciency, and keep them in operation. 
To do that the ranks of the army must be recruited. 
Those who are not in favor of filling up the army 
are not in favor of crushing the Rebellion, and want 
the Rebel ion to succeed. The ranks ot the army 
must be recruited ; and how shall it be done ? You can- 
not do it by volunteering; but it must be done by 
the Consciiption act. It is a matter of necessity 
that that act should be enforced everywhere. Some 
of you, perhaps, do not like the Conscription act. 
It is an odious thing at the best; a thing which 
cannot be made acceptable to the people. Yet it 
should be understood that it is a necessary evil, 
and should be accepted as such. If you do not 
like the Conscription act, let me ask the question, 
who are the men who forced the conscription upon 
the nauon ? They are the men who have enoeavered 
to make the war odious. They are thf men who 
have produced the state of public opinion which 
has entirely cut off and suspended all volunteering. 
They are the men who have encouraged desertion 
from the army. They are the men wbo have en- 
deavored to depreciate the national currency, to 
discourage ttie army, to discourage men from volun- 
teeiing. These are ihe men who have brought the 
Consciiption act upon the country; and I pray yoa 
to hoid them- responsible for it. The Goverument 
would much prefer to depend upon volunteer- 
ing to the end, as it had in the beginning; but aa 
that became imposjible in consequence of the 
opposition to the war, it became necessary to 
resort at last to the Conscription act. Let 
me Here advert briefly to wnat is called the $300 
section. VVe are told tnat that ia the rich man's 



18 



section ; that it was designed to exoncTate the rich 
man, and to embrace the poor man. I want to cor- 
rect that. I disapproved of it, but it was for a very 
different reason from those demagogues who are 
trying to excite the country against the law. I pre- 
ferred that it should allo-.v the drafted man to fur- 
nish a substitute, but leave to him the expense and 
the trouble of getting a substitute. But why was 
the $300 clause put in ? It was put in for the ben- 
efit of the poor man. In Indiana we had a little 
draft — a draft of a iew thousand men for nine 
monthg — and the price of substitutes ran up from 
$200 to $800 or $900 in a very few days after the 
draft was made. Does it require an argument to 
show that there is a much larger number of poor 
men in New-York who can procure $300, than of 
men who can procure a substitute when they have 
to pay $800 to $1,000 for him? This was the idea 
which led Congress to insert the $300 clause; to 
protect the poor man from the result which expe- 
rience had indicated, that the price of substitutes 
would run up even to $1,000, putting it entirely out 
of the power of a man of moderate means to pro- 
cure a substitute at all. Yet this clause has been 
perverted and falsely held up before the people, to 
make the Government and the war odious. Gov. 
M. proceeded to demonstrate the propriety of em- 
ploying negro regiments, of the Emancipation Proc- 
lamation, and of "arbitrary arrests." He conclud- 
ed by showing that the Rebellion now derives its 
vitality only from the hope of dissension in the 
North, and by an earnest appeal for united effort to 
suppress the Rebellion at once and forever. 

Gen. A. J. Ha^iilton followed in an able and 
eloquent address which was listened to with earnest 
attention and repeated applause. 

Hon. James M. Scovel of the New-Jersey Le- 
gislature, one of the seventeen who did not vote for 
the Peace resolutions, made a short speech, and 

The Rev. J. T. Duryea concluded with a few 
remarks; the audience dispersing in the gathering 
shades of twi light 



STAIVI> NO. 3. 

Speeches by Gen. Sigel, Schuyler Colfax, 
aud Others. 

This stand was decorated with the American colors, 
and with banners bearing the inscriptions, "One 
Flag, One Destiny, One Country;" "Sustain our 
Brave Soldiers." A band of musicians were in at- 
tendance, and commenced the proceedings by per- 
forminff the grand march from " Le Prophete." The 
meeting was called to order by Dr. Francis Lieber, 
who upon taking the chair spoke as follows : 
SPEECH OF DR. LIEBER. 

Fellow-Citizens: Two years ago the boom of 
the cannon of treason reached us from Charleston, 
and now this very day we expect news from that' 
very port. We do not know in which way the news 
will turn — whether it will bring us tidings of victory, 
or whether reverses will follow. But, fellow-citizens, 
I venture fo say that whether we are vi-torious im- 
mediately and take that traitorous city, or whether 
every iron-clad vessel is sunk to the bottom there, 
we will remain firm — we will carry out this war to 
the very last, and will not give h up until every inch 
of the country is restored to the Union. [Ctieers.] 
No matter what turn the war has taken during the 
last two years — sometimes we were victorious, and 
sometimes we were baffled — we meet auain to-day to 
profess our faith, and tigain pledge ourselves not to 
give up the struggle — not to yield one inch — until 
the United States authority is lestored, until we 
have again a country in her whole integrity, until 
we can say again that we are American citizens from 



North to Sjuth, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
[Loud cheer?.] We will not allow pride, or ar- 
rogance, or uiitruth to rule over us. We come here 
to pledge ourselves again. I believe I can express 
far better what I believe we have met here for, if I 
read to you a portion of the address that will subse- 
quently be read to you in its entirety. There I have 
expressed on paper my views better'than I could by 
word of mouth, and I hope and trust I have only ex- 
pressed Union feeling. I will a.k my friend, Mr. 
Lossing, to read to you the last portion of the ad- 
dress, and inquire if you agree with us or not. [Ap- 
plause.] 

Mr. B. J. Lossing said he felt it to be an honor to 
repeat to the meeting the wise words contained in 
the address. He went on to state that on the 12th 
of April, 1861, the news of the attack on Fort Sum- 
ter reached New-Orleans, where he was then stay 
ing. That forenoon, while sketching upon the fields 
where Jackson won his last great battle, he heard 
seven discbarges of cannon in New-Orleans, and 
observed to his companion that they were rejoicing 
in New-Orleans over the secession of the seven Con- 
federate States; but the dischargts sounded to him 
as the death knell of the oligarchy of the country. 
From that day to this he believed firmly that the 
whole rebellion was nothing more than an instru- 
mentality in the hands of God to strengthen and 
purify the nation. [Applause.] Mr. L. then read 
from the address as requested. 

During Mr. Lossing's remarks. Gen. Sigel came 
upon the stand, and, upon being recognized, was 
greeted with enthusiastic cheering. 

SPEECH OF GEN. SIGEL. 

Loud calls were made for Major-Gen. Sigel, who 
was then introduced. He spoke as follows: 

Citizens — [A Voice — " Sprectien Deutch ?'"] You 
will have somebody that will give you something 
better than I can do in German. Citizens of New- 
York, I greet you. I am glad to see a_ peaceful 
armj around me. [Applause.] I am glad to see the 
people of New- York so faithful to their Government, 
and so decided in maintaining the great principles 
laid down in the Declaration of Independence and 
in the Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln. [Great 
cheers.] Theie are some, my friends, who say that 
the safetv of this country will depend on the muscles 
of m;n— -on the strong arms of the Democracy. 
There are some who say so now. I answer ttiem, in 
the name of a great people, that the rights ot men 
and republican principles are stronger than the 
muscles of a few thousand demagogues [Tremen- 
dous cheers and a voice, " That's the talk."] Now, 
my friends, we are not fighting a new battle. This 
time is not a new time for the American people. It 
is the spirit of 1776 [applause] which is making its 
tour round the globe, and which is revived in the 
hearts of the American people. [Renewed ap- 
plause.] My friends, the spirit is awakened and 
we have to maintain it. It not only i^ revived in 
the hearts of the American people, but it tiae per- 
meated France and Italy; it has revived Germany 
andHurgary; it has put the si ythe and the lance 
into the hands of Kosciusko, Mieroslawski and Lan- 
ffiewicz, and it even has fiightened awav that far- 
away grizzly bear of Peteisburg. And Europe 
looks upon you as those who have to fight the battk. 
They say yju began in 1776. It is America which 
h!)s brought forth this great movement, the French 
Revolution and all the revolutions following; 
and it is in this country where the last 
blow must be struck, and where the 
last battle must be fought. [Cheers.] You are not 
of the opinion of those who think that this war must 
be ended now and must be ended very quickly, and 
I am not of that opinion either. Europe has for 
thirty years fought for religious independence and 
for the freedom of conscience. We, the American 
people, have to fight Jor republicanism and for the 
independence of nations. [Cheers.] We must not 
get tired. Your ancestors fought seven years to ac- 



19 



quire their independence, and I think that tbe princi- 
ples for which we are now battling and fighting are 
worth that we at least spend half that time for their 
maintenance. [Applause.] They say that this war 
is led on slowly. It is true. But the first year, you 
know very well, was spent in experimentiDg, in 
illusions, in false hopes; the second year was hardly 
sufficient to gather our forces ; and the third year, I 
think, will be sufficient to draw the iron band closely 
around seceesionism, to strangle it. [Cheers, and a 
voice — "Ten thousand men for Sigel."] I thank 
you for. your sympattiies. I have not come here to 
engage in the business of speech-making. I am only 
here ou an errand, and 1 hope I will not be here 
very long. I thank you for your sympathies, and 
make room for somebody better. 

Gen. Sigel wag loudly cheered on resuming his 
seat. 

Dr. EuDOLPH DuLON then addressed the audience 
in the German language, and his speech, which was 
an eloquent appeal in behalf of the National cause, 
was loudly applauded. 

SPEECH OF THE HON. SCHUYLER COLFAX. 

The Hon. Schuyler Colfax ot Indiana was intro- 
duced by Gen. Sigel as his \alued friend and as a 
"first-rate man." 

Mr. Colfax said that every man who spoke in the 
language of fatherland from Germany, or in the lan- 
guage of bis own mother tongue was his friend and 
brother. There were others speaking for our noble 
Union that day in the very jaws of danger, in the 
port of Charleston, South Carolina. [Applause. 1 
God bless those noble men of arms who have gone 
forth to plant our banner victoriously on the place 
where the reptile flag of disunion first was raised ! 
[Cheers.] The afternoon of this April day to-day in 
Charleston has an atmosphere hanging over it lurid 
with shot and shell and flame. [Renewed applause.] 
There waves on the one hand the Palmetto flag of 
treason, which seeks to divide this noble country, 
the heritage of our fathers ; and above yon, sons and 
brothers — worthy sons of worthy sires — floats the 
banner of beauty, of glory, that never yet paled in 
the face of any foe, but which traitors have sought 
to trample in the dust. [Applause and a voice: 
"They can't do it."] My friends, in the hour when 
our country comes to make up her jewels, these 
brave men will be remembered in our heart of 
hearts — those men who went forth from this city, 
from my District in the far Western State of Indi- 
ana, and every other loyal district in the Union, 
some in the freshness of life's June and some in 
the full maturity of life's October, to give their 
life, if need be, for their beloved country — those men 
whose example shall live as long as nistory, and 
whose memory shall blossom even in the very dust 
of the grave. Their names shall be written higtt 
upon the scroll of American fame. God bless them 
to-day ! May the God of Battles that stood by our 
fathers in the infancy of this country, and out of 
weakness gave them strength and power, stand by 
our noble defenders to-day. [Anplause.] My friends, 
I want you to remember one tning more about that 
gallanf. army. The men who are under the folds of 
the Aiiierican flag quarreled in the past, as you have, 
in reg.rd to transitory issues. They quarreled at 
the piimary meetings, at the polls, everywhere 
where men could honestly differ in the exercise of a 
freeman's privilege, but when their country was in 
danger, when the issues of national life and death 
hung trembling in the balance, they threw away 
from them all these petty differences, and struck 
hands together as noble patriots under our country's 
flag. Why cannot we imitate their noble example 
here at home, for to-day the question is not the 
minor issues of the past, which are but as dust 
in the balance. It is the greater, tbe no- 
bler, the more important question — not only 
as regards the heritage bequeathed to us, but in 
regard to your posterity in the coming generations 



of the future. . It is whether this Republic of ours 
shall live, or whether it shall die— whether this 
country shall remain a beacon light for the oppressed 
of all nations, with the Union as its insignia, as it 
has been in the past, of its power and strength, or 
whether it shall be shattered to pieces, and be sub- 
ject to the insult, invasion of the foreign despot, 
until liberty shall be crushed out in the warring 
remnants of tbe American Republic. [Voices — 
"Never."] It is for that that hostile armies are 
marshalled to-day against the ranks of treason. 
There are some who go about crying peace, peace, 
when there can be no peace except on the basis of 
submission to rightful authority. [Cheers.] Those 
who would consent to have the Union severed by the 
sword of treason are as false-hearted as the pretended 
mother whose deceit Solomon detected by proposing 
to _ divide the child to settle the dispute with her 
neighbor. [Cheers.] Such a man may have been 
rocked in an American crad/e and suckled by an 
American mother, but he has not an American heart. 
[Cheers.] Mr. Colfax then paid a just tribute to the 
deeds of Gen. Sigel m the field, saying that he could 
not point to one solitary error committed by him. 
Before this war closes he trusted the Administration 
would weed out every commanding officer whose 
whole heart was not in the struggle, and then in the 
closing Waterloo of the straggle you will see Sigel 
and the men who fought mit Sigel charging. [Loud 
cheers.] While the speaker indorsed tbe President's 
Proclamation through and through, yet he regarded 
any man who stood unconditionally by the Union, 
the President and the army, as a true, whole-souled 
patriot, no matter whether he thought the Proclama- 
tion was the blood or the marrow. [Cheers.] Some 
said that the South would not submit. He would 
say in reply that it was dying to day, and that the 
very women who are now engaged in the bread riots 
to procure food, would, when the military power of 
the South is broken, huil our flag not only as an em- 
blem of the Union, but as the harbinger of plenty to 
them. [Cheers.] Mr. Colfax closed by alluding to 
the return of the soldiers of New -York, who, having 
gone forth as the vindicators and defenders of the 
Union, would return as its saviors, having illustrated 
their devotion to the old flag, of which one of our 
poets had so beautifully written: 

Flag of our hearts, our symbol and our trust, 
Though traitors tiample tliy bright folds in dust, 
Though vile ambitioij, dark rebellion's lust 

Conspire to tear thee down: 
Millions of loyal lips thy folds caress, 
MiUioDs of loyal heaita thy stars do bless. 
Millions of loyal hands will round thee press 
To guard thy old renown. 
[Three cLeers.] 

SPEECH OF GOV. PIERPONT. 
Governor Pierpont of Virginia was the next 
speaker. He remarked that the attack on Fort 
Sumter was not the sudden impulse of passion, but 
it was the outbreak of an old feeling that had fought 
against our fathers in the days of the Revolution 
under the name of Tory, that had taken its seat in 
South Carolina, and had been in South Carolina pol- 
itics from that day until the present, and had many 
sympathizers in tbe shape of Copperheads. [Cheers.] 
They had decided that the two "institutions of labor 
in this country could not exist; had preached the 
doctrine that where labor participated in govern- 
ment the institutions of the country could not be 
stable, and had affirmed that the laborers of the 
South were slaves, and that the laborers of the North 
were no better. They had inculcated all these doc- 
trines into the minds of tbeir children, and had inau- 
gurated this revolution, not for tbe purpose of per- 
petuating Slavery or dividing the North, but for the 
purpose of enslaving laboring men, whether they 
were in the North or whether they were in the 
South. [Applause.] They hai been induced to be- 
lieve at the South (and he well knew it, because he 
was m their midst) that the people of the North 



20 



would not fight ; and tbey believed tbat one South- 
«rn man was equal to five Northern men, because 
the Southerner was a gentleman and tlie Northerner 
a slave. The North had victories and reverses in 
this contest; but, while the South has beea united 
in this great fight, the North has had its atten- 
tion divided. The war woald soon draw to a clo?e, 
and it must have one of two termioations. The 
South would subjugate the North and put the 
white laboring men of the North upon an equality 
with their slaves, or else the North would whip ihe 
South, and place them and their slaves upon an 
equality, and tell them by the eteraal God that a 
traitor had no more rights than a slave. [Cheers.] 
Germans, Irishmen, lugitives from oppression abroad, 
have you not seen enough of autocracy in the Old 
World? [Voices — "Too much."] Have you come 
here to nnite with men to establish a Southern Con- 
federacy ? [A voice — "No — cau'teeeit." Laughter.] 
Have you come here to take part with men who hold 
that all laboring men are unworthy of participatiog 
in government, and are incapable of being freemen ? 
Fellow-citizens,' we must be in earnest; we must put 
down all traitors, wliether at the North or at the 
Sooth ; we must win in this last fight for liberty. 
[Cheers.] When future generations read the history 
of our country, they would look back upon the Amer- 
ican Republic as the best government tbat ever ex- 
isted. Would the historian say that five millions of 
whites, backed up by four millions of slaves, made 
war upon a democracy of eighteen millions, and 
whipped aid subjugated them? ["Never."] That 
would not be the case; but it would be written that 
the freemen of the North rose in their strong h and 
overthrew the enemy. In conclusion, Gov. Pierpont 
alluded to the triumphant vote io favor of freedom in 
his State. Out of 48,000 votes cast in 1860, 30,000 
were now recorded against Slavery ; and as the Rebels 
had drawn off some 12,000 of the remainder into 
the army, only a corporal's guard of the allies of 
Slavery were left. [Cheers.] He also stated that 
he meant to make every man in the State of Vir- 
ginia, who held office, swear to support the Consti- 
tution of the United States, including every 
person liolding a licenee, merchants, tavern- 
keepers, mnneipal officers, ministers who celebrated 
the rites of inarriage, bank officers, from president 
to clerk; and he thought it would do no harm to 
have a little of that kind of administration here — 
[laughtei] — especially if it embraced editors of 
newspapers. [Cheers.] Gov. P. was here obliged 
to stop on account of the failure of his voice, but he 
hoped this wou'd not be the last opportunity he 
would have of addressing the citizens of New-York. 
[Cheers.] 

Gen. SiGEL said that he had had communication 
with Gov. Pieipont, and he had found that he was a 
man of soanci prmciples. 

Dr. LiEBER announced the death of Jas. L. Peti- 
gru of Charleston, and oSered a series of appropriate 
resolutions, which were unanimously adopted. " 

The Hon. Montgomery Blair was introduced, 
and said a few words; and 

Mr. Weill acd Dr. FoERscH addressed the audi- 
ence in German. 

The proceedings were conducted in an orderly 
manner, in strict accordance wiih the programme, 
and the speakers were listened to with the most 
marked attention and interest, whether speaking in 
German or Eoglish. The concourse was large from 
first to last, and the demonstration was a most suc- 
cessful one. 

STAND NO. 4. 
Speeches by ITIajor-Gcn. Fremont, the Hon. 
Koscoe Coiililing, the Hon. Crco. W. 
Julian, nnd W. 3. A. Fuller, esq. 

The prescLce of Major Gen. Fremont and staff at 
Stand No. 4, atlracled a large audience to the north- 
west corner of Union Square, who were entertained, 



before the exercises commenced, by music from 
Robertson's Band and salutes of artillery, which lat- 
ter did not cease until the meeting closed. The stand 
was decorated with the national flag, and on each 
end was a banner, one inscribed "Loyal National 
League — a common Union, to maintain the power, 
glory, and iotelligence of the Union;" the other, 
" Stistain our Brave Soldiers." The platform was 
girt round with the legend, " Pledged to Uncon- 
ditional Loyalty." 

The Hon. Chas. King, of the Council of the Loyal 
National League, called the meeting to order, and 
the proceedings were opened by prayer, offered by 
the Rev. Rosvvell Hitchcock. The reading of 
the Vice-Presidents and Secretaries, the address and 
letters, was dispensed with. 

Robert B. Minturn, jr., read the resolutions, 
which were carried by acclamation. Then came 
music by the band, after which 

The Chairman said: I am now about to present 
to you one who has a right to claim your attention — 
for he has shOwn his devotion to his country by 
leading her soldiers to the field, and by encountering 
— what is worse than armed hosts — the prejudices of 
lukewarm men, half and half friends and patriots — 
men who, if they bad their way, would make a 
compromise to-moi-row with Slavery and all its hor- 
rors, and who now, under the guise of peace, would 
make useless, or worse than useless, the treasures of 
blood spilled by your children and mine, to vindicate 
the gloripus flag which Rebels would trample down. 
[Cheers.] Fellow-citizens, I present to you Major- 
Gen. Fremont. 

Gen. Fremont was greeted with a burst of en- 
thusiasm which continued some minutes. Quiet 
being restored, he said: 

SPEECH OF GEN. FREMONT. 

Fellow-Citizens: I had the honor of beingasked 
to meet you here to-day, and to address j'ou. I ac- 
cepted the invitation for the pleasure it gave me to 
meet you, and for the further satisfactiou I would 
have in using the occasion to say how fully and how 
cordially I sympathize with you in the objects ot 
this meeting. Two years ago you met here and ac- 
cepted the war inaugurated on this memorable day 
at Fort Sumter. [Cheers.] To-day. again, the 
noif e of battle rolls around that monumental fort, 
and we are hourly waiting to hear the thunder of 
the guns which shall announce that at length our 
outraged flag has been gloriously avenged. [Ap- 
plause.] But whatever may be the fortune of the 
day, no anniversary could have been found more fit- 
ting to renew your pledges that there shall be no 
wavering in your support of the Government, no 
faltering in the purpose of tne North to restore and 
maintain, undivided and free to all, the whole terri- 
tory of the United States of America. [Applause.} 
Tne public assemblages, of which tliis is the first, 
are intended to draw together and to give effect and 
voice to the opinions and feelings of the people on 
the great question of the day. We welcome these 
manifestations as the evidence of healthy activity 
in the public mind. They indicate unmistakably 
that the nation is not drifting', but moving with a 
fixed and resolute purpose — that a feeling of uncon- 
ditional loyalty is rapidly abaorbing all varieties of 
opinion, and fusing all party distinctions into the 
single lesolve to jireserve our national unity, at 
every cost. [Applause.l But while permitting my- 
B-lf the pleasure of meeting you here and of taking 
part in this commemoration, I have declined to avail 
myself of the invitation with which I had been hon- 
oied, to address you. The subjects on which I had 
been asked to speak required a scope of comment 
and suggestion, in which" I do not feel at liberty to 
indulge. I decline to do so in deference to the com- 
monly received opinion that a certain offii^ial pro- 
priety pro''iibit8 olficers of the army and navy from 
speaking in popular assemblies. But mure eppecially 
1 decline to do so, because I wasinformfd, not very 
long since, that officers permitting themselves to 
take pan in public affairs outside of their professional 



21 



uties had been characterized by bigh authority as 
'political Generals." [Laughter.] But in giving 
vay to this usage, I am not at all satisfied that it is 
he'correct view of the scope of an oiHcer's duty in 
bis country, and amidst the disorders of a civil war. 
Jnder other forms of government, where the head of 
he nation shapes and directs its policy, and where 
he agents and the people themselves "Bimply con- 
orm, tbis suppressed freedom " of speecb, where it 
last have expression, necessarily takes the form of 
, revolt, and is consequently more incompatible 
yith the public tranquillity. Bu>, ia this country, 
yhere there is really such a thing as public af- 
aire upon which the nation deliberates, and where 
he vitality of the system depends upon the fact 
hat every man is expected to take a living in- 
erest in them, the case is widely different. 
lere the Government simply executrs the will 
f the people, to which it is expected strictly to 
onform, and concerning which it ought, conse- 
uently, to be well informed. [Applause.] The 
lilitary power is only an executive arm of the 
overei'gn in this country — the people; and instead 
f forming that milisary power into a distinct and 
eparate class, and creating barriers between the 
rmy and the people, everything ought to be done to 
;eep the soldier one of them [applause!, having com- 
lon interests and common opinions. [Applause.] 
.'o isolate them and their sentiments would be, or 
aight be, highly dangerous to our free Government, 
,nd in this country there should De no such thing as 
, military party. [Applause.] We have lately seen 
yith what satisfaction the country received the reso- 
utions of our troops in the field— how timely and 
mportant was their influence — not the less because 
t was evident that they had no idea of merging into 
he soldier iheir sympathies and privileges of the 
itizen. [Applause.] And it is absurd to say ihat 
a a war of ideas, a conflict of principles, in a revo- 
ution which is taking the shape of a refoima'ion — a 
evolution which involves the civilization of the age, 
ind to the results of which the friends of liberty are 
ooking with the deepest anxiety and interest in 
very part of the world — in all this momentous 
truggle, that the men most actively concerned, tak- 
ng toe most active part and making the costliest 
aorifices, should have no opinion. It is idle to tell 
IS that the opinions of ofiicers in important places 
lave no influence on the conduct and the re- 
ults of the war. Nor does it always hap- 
)6n that a General has the choice to ren- 
ler his service lo the country in the more con- 
;enial duties of the field; he may be placed in 
iharge of a distant and rebellious provioce, sepa- 
ated, disconnected from the seat of the Government 
)y the conditions of the war, and where necessarily 
le must be much governed by his own conviclions 
ind his own opinions. Would it reflect — does it re- 
lect on the soldierly qualities of that General that 
le had the ability to institute a policy which ena- 
)led him, in the midst of rebe'lion and anarchy, to 
lold in subjection to the laws and to reduce into 
jood order and healthy propriety, and to restore in 
ts commercial relations to the Union, the great me- 
tropolis of the South. [Applause.] Men who, by 
aniiing with you here two years a?.o, subjected 
.hemselves to the charge of being political Generals, 
lave sealed with their lives their devotion to this 
^use. [Appla' 89.] Then Schenck and Mitchel and 
Baker spoke to you here. [Applause.] The one has 
jiven his blood and the others their lives in your ser- 
i^ice. [Applause. J Were they the less good soldiers 
jecause they came to you here, on the eve of battle, 
;o get inspiration and to find encouragement and re- 
Qewed strength in the assurances of your support 1 
[Applause avid cries of " No."] It is not here that 
the name of " political General" can be consid- 
ered a stigma or a disqualification. [Applause. | 
Already shadows begin to people this place, and the 
spot has become classic ground. Two years ago this 
was one among the many beautiful openings which 
decorate your city. Yoa had no Buoker Hill to 
serve as a field-altar of patriotism. In this spldndid 



city— this radiating center of the material prosperitv 
of the countr)-— there was wanting the traditional 
spot in sight of which no man could, without shame, 
fall below the spirit of the day which gave it an his- 
toric fame. [Applause.] But here already you 
have sermons in these stones — there you have your 
field-altar. [Cheers.] In ti^ht of that stattie of 
Washington you come here to-day to renew your 
pledges — you promise that in his hand, which two 
years^go held up to your indignant gaze your dis- 
carded and outraged 'flag, you will yet place the 
standard which shall be raised in victory over the 
walls of Sumter. [Great applause.] You promise 
ttiat you will never agree to a dismemheiment of the 
country which he left you — [Voices — '• Never," and 
applause] — and that next to the crime of the traitors 
who are striking in arms at the life of the nation, 
you will hold the guilt of those men who, placed in 
responsible positions, do not use every effort to di- 
rect, with most terrible energy, the power of this 
country to destroy the Rebellion. [Tremendous 
cheering, and three times three cheers for Gen. Fre- 
mont.] 

The Chairman: I now, fellow-citizens, present 
to you one of our own representatives — a man who 
has proved that bullying could not hurt him. He 
was a member of Congress when this great crime 
was committed, and the experiment was tried on 
him which has been tried on others, by some of the 
yellow-faced Southern chivalry — to bully him, by 
talk of pistols and bowie knives. He told them, 
"By the grace of God, I carry my defenders here 
(pointing to his braast), and if any man wants to 
fight, let him come on." [Vehement cheers.] I 
present to you Mr. Roscoe Conkling. 

SPEECH OF HON. ROSCOE CONKLING. 
Loud applause greeted Mr. Conkling, who said: 
Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens : Ton 
have assembled to commemorate an event which 
must be memorable in history to the latest syllable 
of recorded time. You celebrate an anniversary 
which will be canonized, or cursed, till the holiest 
fountains of human sentiment are forever frozen or 
dried up. You solemnize the recurrence of a day 
which will stand in the calendar hereafter as a day 
which did much to manifest tlse nothiagoess or immor- 
tality of human rights. [Cheers.] The 12ih of April,. 
1861, was a day of darkness and deapair; our sun 
was eclipsed, and no man could see to read the dial. 
It was a day of humiliation and death, but through 
that death there came a glorious resurrection and 
ascension. When Samter fell, 

" You, and I, and all of us fell down, 
And bloody treason flourished over ua." 

[Cheers.] But two years have passed — two years- 
" of plots and counterplots, of gain and loss, of glory 
and disgrace" — and undismayed and undaunted, yon 
come to say to doubters and to enemies, as William 
Tell said to his native mountaineers, 

" We bold to you the hands you first beheld. 
To show they Btill are free." [Cheers. J 

It seems to be a maxim in the economy of Provi- 
dence that the trials of a nation are io the ratio of 
its destinies. If it be poor and powerless, if it 
have no empire and holds no position envied by the 
world, it may escape the blasts of war, and languish 
for long intervals in unmolested calmness. Bat if 
it be rich and powerful, it' it claim as its own one- 
tenth of the globe, if in the lifetime of a single 
man it grows to be the foremoat Power in all the 
earth, it must accept peri's and struggles as the price 
of its greatness and success. 

If beside being ])owerful, a people has set up in- 
stitutions in which no trace of aristtcracy or king- 
craft is tolerated, it has voluntarily elected to make 
its own soil the theater of a contest which has been 
wagiog since time began between oppression and 
liberty. It is the mission and loreordainel destiny 
of a people assuming to found and mainiain a 
democrauc Government to wrestle and grapple with 



22 



the foes of freedom and equality witbia and with- 
out; and the struggle now raging in America in only 
the old battle for human rights transplanted from 
the Old World to the New. [Applause.] We had 
no right to expect to escape it. Why should we ? 

Why should we hope to elude the evil passions 
and instincts which have led men the world over to 
seek the destruction of equal rights, and the aggran- 
dizement of the few at the expense of the many? 

We knew that nowhere had men rehnquished 
superior and exclusive privilege without a cohtest; 
why should they do it here — here in the new world, 
the place reserved for republican government to 
Vindicate itself forever, or to wither from the world ? 
Time, and civilization, and government, had their 
morning not in the west, but in the east. Dawn 
flushed, and yet centuries rolled by before light 
broke upon the Western Continent. 
Why was this ? 

Why was half the globe kept hidden away behind 
a trackless waste of waters, till the other half had 
been dug over and over, to bury its dead. Why 
were progress and barbarism mewed up so long in 
the old world, to solve in blood the problems of 
humanity ? 

Perhaps the new world was reserved till mankind 
should be fitted for a higher and better dispensation. 
Perhaps it was designed to withhold this inheri- 
tance from man, till the race had been tried, and ia- 
etructed, and exalted, by the wisdom and the folly, 
the virtues and the vices of wasted ages. 

If this was the design, we can understand our 
mission, and accept our responsibilities. 

If it is the mission of the American people to make 
their continent a garden for the growth of a new 
civilization, higher and better and truer than the 
world has ever known, we may understand the 
logic which permits blood to stain' our land. 

If we maiutain successfully that man needs no 
mortal master but himself, we bring forth a great 
new truth, and no great truth was ever yet bora 
into the world without great pangs. 

It costs great pangs to plant the germ of free gov- 
ernment here, and the manner in which the experi- 
ment began might well convince the mind of ialth 
that Providence had charge over it. The task was 
undertaken by a group of men which no previous 
age could have produced. They were the victims of 
all the bad systems of government then extant, and 
they were called to devise a new system just when 
the world was all ablaze with political intelligence. 
All the past was before taem, and the French Rev- 
olution was just delivering its terrible message to 
mankiad. 

Two forms of government had already been tried 
here. 

The Colonial system had been tested and thrown 
oflf. 

The Confederate system had been fairly tried, and 
found fit to live only through the revolution it sup- 
ported. All the members of the Confederacy had 
found the need of a stronger system, closer knit. I 
say all— all but South Carolina, who put herself up 
to be raffled for by the contending parties, to belong 
to the British Crown or the American Republic, as 
the one or the other should succeed in the struggle of 
which she was to be the safe spectator. 

The Fathers of the Republic, in their almost in- 
spiration, saw clearly that a Governmeot, to be en- 
during and free, must be a union, not of States, but 
of the people ; not a partnership, nor a club of thir- 
teen members, but an eternal wedlock of the 
nation. 

They fashioned their work accordingly— they ex- 
cluded carefully all State rights which "would mili- 
tate against the supremacy of the Federal Govern- 
ment. 

Some of their acts seem prophetic now, when men 
here in New- York, " leading poJiticians," as Lord 
liyons calls tbem, are piopoelDg to array the State 
■against the General Government, and to nullify the 
act for enrolling soldiers, and other acts of Congress. 



An effort was made to put into the Constitution 
some way in which, men could oppose the General 
Government, under cover of State authority, and 
yet dodge the halter, but the halter was carefully 
kept i a. 

Luther Martin, the Attorney-General of Maryland, 
went home from the Convention and delivered to 
the Legislature of his State the following statement, 
which I commend to those politicians with a snaky 
name, who, according to the good book, must be the 
most subtle of all the beasts of the held [loud cheers 
and laughter] : 

" By the principles of the American Revolution arbitrary 
power may, aad ought to be resisted, even by arms if neces- 
sary. The time may come when it shall be the doty of a 
State, in order to preserve itself from the oppression of the 
General Government, to have recourse to the sword: in which 
case the proposed form of government declares that the Stute, 
and every one of its citizens who act under its authority, are 
guilty of a direct act of treason; reducing by this provision 
the different States to this alternative, that they must tamely 
and passively yield to despotism, or their citizens must oppoie 
it at the haxarfi of the halter if nnsuccestful—and reducing th» 
citizens of the State which shall take arms to a. situation in 
which they must be exposed to punishment, let them act as they 
will, since if they obey the authority of their State Govern- 
ment, they will be guilty of treason against the United Stales; 
if they join the General Government, they will be guilty of 
treason aiainst their own State, 

"To save the citizens of the respective -States from this 
disagreeable dilemma, and to secure them from being punish- 
able as traitors to the United States, when acting expressly in 
obedience to the authority of their own State, I wished to 
have obtained as an amendment to the third section of this 
article, the following clause: 

" ' Provided, That no act or acts done by one or more of the 
States against the United States, or by any citizen of any one 
of the United States under the authority of one or more of the 
said States, shall be deemed treason or punished as such; bat, 
in case of war being levied by one or more of the States 
agam^t the United States, the conduct of each party toward 
the other, and their adherents respectively, shall be regulated 
by the laws of war and of nations' 

" But this provision was not adopted, being too much 
opposed to the great object of many of tne leading members 
of the Conveution. which was by all means to leave the States 
at the mercy of the General Government, since they could not 
succeed in their immediate aad entire abolition." 

With such views the Constitution was formed, 
and went into operation over a country infinitely 
diversified in soil, climate, and production. 

The attractive portion of the Republic was the 
South. Its breezes were bland, its clime was almost 
perpetual Stimmer, its soil needed only to be tickled 
with a hoe to laugh with a harvest. All these 
charms had enticed the rich, the indolent, and the 
idle. The seat of population, and allowed repre- 
sentation in Congress upon its chattels, of course it 
became the seat of political power. For three- 
quarters of a century it ruled the country absolutelv, 
and enjoyed almost a monoply of public" honors. 

But It relied upon unskilled, unpaid labor, and 
there was the bane of its success. Though it 
started with everything, it was outstripped by free 
labor, which started with nothing. 

Political questions continually arose, and were 
always decided for and by the South. While this 
continued, the South was quiet, apparentlv, vet 
ever plotted against the time when decisions might 
result in favor of other sections of the country. At 
last that time arrived for once. [Applause.] A 
President not of Southern choosing was elected. 
What of that ? Did the leading managing men of 
the South fear that their rights or their slaves would 
be taken from them ? I deny it. After some as- 
sociation, in Congress and out, with those who 
plunged the South into Rebellion, I deny that they 
for a moment feared that Abraham Lincoln would 
or could disturb their institutions. 

But there was another thing they did fear. Their 
personal ambition would be thwarted, and also their 
plans for prostituting the Government for the ben- 
efit of their own "section," as they called it. 

The time had come when they and their sons 
could no longer hold all the offices, civil and mili- 
tary, at home and abroad, and when they could no 
longer manage the foreign and home policy of the 
Government so as to pick a quarrel with anybody 



I 



23 



who happened to have an Wand or anything else 
that they wanted to steal. [Cheers.] 

They were to be deprived of these things if they 
stayed' in the Union; if they went out, they saw 
visions of new wealth and pox^er. A new empire 
in the tropics dazzled their eyes. An unlimited and 
unrestrained license to steal land from feeble 
neighbors on the South and to plant it 
with Slavery, the reopening of the slave- 
trnde to Christianize the barbarians of 
Africa, these and kindred objects seemed to them 
preferable to remaining in a Government in which 
they must at last divide the monopoly they had en- 
joyed. Fair play is what they rebelled against; 
equality is what they couldn't endure ; free govern- 
ment put into actual practice is what they would not 
submit to, and they made a bloody issue to de- 
stroy it. 

Is not this the old fight over again, the encounter 
once more between equal rights and privilege, the 
dying kick of despotism ? 

Surely it is, and with an aristocratic element in 
the Government, it was bound to come. You could 
not check the laws of growth in the North, nor of 
decay in the South, and hence, in time, the balance 
of power was sure to charge. This was inevitable, 
and yet tbe minority would not loosen their hold, 
without dipping their hands in the blood of their 
country. 

I laid down the proposition that the trials of a 
nation must be gauged by its destinies, and is it not 
clear that our destiny left us no course except to re- 
eist to the uttermost the bloody raid which we are 
still repelling ? 

The patriotism of the people answered that ques- 
tion two years ago to-day. Gen. Jackson believed 
that there was deity and divinity in masses of men — 
that whatever a nation affirmed to be true, must be 
immutable truth. [Cheers.] Never, perhaps, was 
there stronger proof of the quick infallibility of a 
people's instinct, than when the heart of America 
vibrated with the news that traitors had battered 
Sumter, and trampled on the flag. [Applause.] Did 
any man among you speak of submission or sepa- 
ration at ttiat time? No; those who could not 
speak for their country then, were dumb — they dared 
not speak for treason. 

They dared not consort with tbe Embassador of a 
foreign power to betray their country then. Thej 
dared not hawk at their Government then, and aestiil 
it with the tricks of the mountebank and the pettifog- 
ger. Public sentiment would not tolerate it. Why 
does public sentiment tolerate it now 1 

Why does public eentiment tolerate it in this proud 
city, where, beside all LieLer motives, you have 
smh an enormous stake of money, in the supremacy 
of the Government? Here, wbere two hundred 
millions of debts are due fiom the South, here where 
you have for ten years furnished 90 per cent of all 
the money tbe Government has had, here where you 
hold Govenmeiit securities amouLting to more than 
eighty mi lb on dollars, why is it that public senti- 
n.ent tolerates men who are doing more to help Ke- 
bellion than if they had muskets in their hands and 
stood behind the liebel lines ? There ought to be 
seme good reason why loyal people are doomed to put 
up with the revilings" and hypocritical lamentations 
and complaints of men who, for the wrongs done 
their country ought to be daily and nightly on their 
knees asking forgiveness from God and the mourners. 
It is difficult to know what to do with such peo- 
ple. [A voice: " Hang 'em." "Hang 'em."] 

Mr. ConkUng-^No, no. That would violate the 
wise advice of Dr. Johnson. Goldsmith asked the 
Doctor whether a man who had disgraced himself 
wouldn't do well to cut his throat ? " Why no," taid 
the Doctor, " if he has disgraced himself, let him go 
where he isn't known, in place of going to liell, 
where he is sure to be known." [Great Laughter.] 
The BQCceBB these disturbers have in misleading others 



shows the justice cf the saying that a lie will run a 
mile while the truth is putting on its shoes and stock- 
ings. Suppose their charges and statements are all 
true, just as they make them, does that justify or ex- 
cuse them in the course they have pursued ? Supposie 
it i* true that the President, and the Cabinet., and 
Congre88,and the Administration party have all done 
wrong, why should the Nation be murdered and the 
Government destroyed for that ? 

The war is for the supremacy of the ballot-box 
[cheers], and it is only by standing by the Govern- 
ment and maintaiuiDg it, that we can preserve tbe 
ballot-box, and the ballot-box is the only means of 
correcting public abuses if tbey exist. If men are 
honest in saying that the Government is m unfit 
hands, let them help to wrest it from the assassins 
who are aiming daggers at its heart; and when this 
is done, the people can elect better and more capable 
men. But what reason is there in allowing the 
Government to be ruined because the acts of those 
who happen to represent it for a space are distaste- 
ful ? I Cheers.] If there are imperfections on the 
Administration's head, it is no time to rebuke or 
punish them now. But at any time there is no 
justice in most of the clamors lately raised for 
political effect, and I will say a word of one 
or two of them. It is charged by Secession sym- 
pathizers as one of the reasons for assailing the Gov- 
ernment, that the Rebellion is the result of agi- 
tating the question of Slavery. Suppose it is— is 
the North, are the Anti-Slavery men of the North to 
be blamed or punished for that ? Who has agitated 
the Slavery question in this country since l«i)U I 
There was'no agitation in 1851 and '52 except by a 
few Abolitionsts. who hadn't votes enough to elect 
a constable from Maine to Micnesota. ^« bad 
hushed all agitation then. W^e had annexed Texas 
to extend the area of Slave. y, and fought a bloody 
war and paid $300,000,000 in consequence. \\ e had 
Acquired new territories, but they had been brought 
in without any restriction against Slavery. We bm 
adopted the Compromise measures of 1«^"- r,« 
had civen the South such boundaries as she wanted, 
we had paid tea millions, and adopted a fugitive 
Slave law, which I heard Douglas tell Mason he 
r]Uaeon)dew, and made as Btringen as he could 

bSaWi;n:!."lnT^^^^ 
SventfonradVted the same platform accepting 

t'^X^promiseL^^^^^^^^ 

iCfr;\'g^a i n.%te n^^ti^n wen\tosieepthi^^^^^^^ 
tl e ne Jro had been put aside, and that the legislation 
ofthefonntry was'to be turned to it. commercial 
manufacturing, and material wants. Repose and 
peace was everywhere, when suddenly there came a 
voice as piercing as a cry of fire m the night ana 
men started, as they would leap from their beds to 
see if the house was in flames. What was it T 
Why, the Missouri Compromise was to be repealed. 
The" Missouri Compromise! That wall which our 
fathers built between Slavery and Freedom, 
that ereat covenant which had tranqmlbzed 
a continent, and to which every man was 
pledged and his father before him— was 'hat to 
be destroyed? Who was to do it? Had 
any one in the North petitioned Congress to do it 7 
No. Let us remonstrate, let us pray Congress not 
to do so huge a wrong, not to hoist the flood-gates 
of agitation! and launch the nation upon a boundless 
sea of sectional contention. The people assembled 
in their might, they conjured the party in power to 
stay its hand, thev implored the majo.ny in Congress 
by the memories of the past nnd the hopes and tears 
of th« future; they sent to Washington memorials 
which if heaped togetUer would have barricaded 
Pennsylvania Avenue. But all to no purpose ; the 
Missouri Compromise fell, and tell with a crash 
which resouudb ytt in this bleeding countrj . [Ap^ 



24 



planBe.] Who did it? Who did it? Who did it? 
Who, as Mr. Fillmore said, opened this Pandora's 
box, 8nd let loose every evil of f ectional madneps 
and strife? Did Northern Anti-Slavery men do it ? 
Did any Anti-Slavery man vote for it ? Was it any- 
thing but a monstrous, treaBonaole, cheat of the 
Slavery interest ? [Cheers.] Who carried the torch 
of the incendiary, and ihe knife of the murderer, into 
the Terriiorif 8 ? Who sacked tlieir villages and 
drencheii their fields in blood? Who attempted to 
force Slavery upon an unwilliDg people? Who tried 
to force through the L'compton Conslitution, foul 
■with violence and fraud ? Has there been any 
Slavery agitation in this country for ten years not 
produced by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise ? 
It was that repeal which gave birth to the Reoub- 
lican party, ■which filled its ranks ■with the members 
of all existing organizations, and gave 1,300,000 
votes to John Charles Fremont. If Slavery agita- 
tion has contributed to the Rebellion, let tbe blame 
be ■wbera tbe truth puts it, and noi, on the Anti- 
Slavery men of the North. Let us remember who 
the incendiaries are, ■who, after setting fire to the 
house, complain that those ■who come to put it out 
make a great fuf s, and agitation, and disturbance 
generally. Bat whoever agitated, and however 
wantouly, what has that to do now with rescuing 
oar Goverment and our liberties from the uplified 
hand of treason ? 

Tbere is another wicked pretext fasbionable now 
■with tbe disloyal and the false. It is alleged that 
after Secession began it might have been coaxed to 
stop by Compromise ; and I want to men ion one thing 
on this head to show how much audacity a man must 
have to assume the ground held by politicians of a 
certain school in this State. Thev are protesting that 
they vpere for something at tbe time which, if it had 
been adopted by Congress", would have avertei the 
whole difficulty. What ■were they for in the Legis- 
lature at Albany? They said that the grievance 
of the South ■was, that slaveholders were in 
danger of heine shut out of the Territories vbere the 
cliaiate would let Slavery live, and that was tbe 
trouble to le removed. They bad a plan for doing 
it. It was called the Robinson proposition, and was 
urged and supported as all-sufficient by the very 
men who are now around inqairing who is respon- 
sible for the war, and insisting that it might have 
been compromised. What was the Robinson prop- 
osition ? It proposed that all the Territories should 
be cut in two by the old Missouri Compromise line, 
and that all north of that line should come in as a 
free State, and on the south Slavery should take its 
chance; acd whenever the Territory filled up with 
the number of people required for a representative 
in Congress, it should come in as a State. This was 
the panacea commended then in New-York bj those 
who now oppose the war. Now let me remind you 
that the political friends of the present Administra- 
tion offered the South twice as much as the 
Robinson proposition, and it was spurned. We 
offered them all the territory where Slavery 
could flourish, and offered it without con- 
dition. We offered to admit all as a 
State with Slavery, if it came with Slavery in its 
Constitution, to admit it at once, without waiting 
for a white man 1o move into it, and without any 
stipulation or understanding that any Northern ter- 
ritory should come in free. The territory thus to be 
surrendered to Slavery was free by the laws of 
Mexico. You will see the difference — the Robinson 
proposition required that the North should have, as 
an offse', the half of the territory free, and admit- 
ted as a State, and further, that the South should 
not form its territory into a State until, in lapse of 
time, the census showed 110,000 people there; 
"whereas the proposition offered to the South, in 
Congress, said nothing about the Noifi having any 
share, aud did not require an hour's delay nor any 
number of population whatever. Yet the Robinson 
resolution was thought enough to offer by the same 
men who now cluim that reasonable offers would 
have been accepted. They know that nothing 



would have been accepted except the prostration of 
the Government. They know that the Crittenden 
Coniproniise was defeated' by Southern votes in the 
Senate, as Gov. Johnson stated tbe other night at 
your Academy of Music, and as Edward Everett 
affirmed in Boston day before yesterday. Bat again, 
what difference does it make now whether or 
not if we had done something some other time, 
something else wouldn't Lave happened? 
There is another plea for opposing the war, which 
I see is done not only into speeches, but into poetry, 
here now. It is that the Government party is labor- 
ing not to restore the Union, but to emancipate all 
the slaves even if so doing prevents a restoration. 
This is believed by some fools, perhaps by some 
knaves, and possibly by some honest people, but 
they must he rat"er pig-headed. It ought not to be 
believed or countenanced by any who sympathize 
with our soldiers in tbe field, and want to see them, 
spared hardship or exposure. When the war began 
it was supposed that Slavery would be an element 
of weakness to our enemiee — that the fear of servile 
iusurreciion among four millions of bondmen would 
keep part of the masters at home. We had a right 
to think so. John Brown, with seventeen negroes 
and a cow, had struck terror into all Virginia. 
[Cheers atd laughter.] John Randolph said in Con- 
gress, "Tae fire bell never rings in Richmond that 
every mother does not c asp her baby more closely 
to her breast." Why was this ? Because they i 
lived on a volcano, and knew not at what hour in- ' 
cendiary firej would burst forth, enshrcyaJing cities, 
and painting hell on the sky. Was'ut it reasonable 
to suppose that an element so dreadful as this in 
peace, would be fearful in time of war? Wasn't it 
patriotic to hope aud to wish that slave-owners and 
overseers, might, for fear of slave massacres, be kept 
at home, in place of going to the battle fields of re- 
bellion to slaughter your neighbors and mine? 
Wasn't it right to take advantage of Slavery, and 
naanage it to weaken and paralyze ourenemies ? But 
what was done in deference to the policy of those 
who have stolen the garment of "conservatism," 
and are so pleased with their new clothes that they 
are likely to strut themselves to death ? Why, Gen- 
erals, "conservative" Generals, began to issue proc- 
lamations, and kept issuing proclimations to the 
slaves and their masters, sayiug, "Now, slaves, be 
kind and obedient to your masters; don't you run 
away, if you do we'll send you back; don't you rise, 
if you do we 11 put you down with the whole power 
of the army, and don't you go to scaring your mis- 
treeses or being disobliging, if you do we'll chastise 
you for that." The great idea seemed ta be to let 
the slaves know that they couldn't be permitted to 
take any part in the ceremonies at all. Some of oar 
Generals felt as select and exclusive on that point 
as the boy did at his mother's funeral, when he saw 
a neighbor boy cry, and asked him, "What business 
have you to cry here? this ain't none of your 
funeral." What was the result of thus guard- 
ing Rebel property? In place of an ele- 
ment of danger and weakness to the Rebels, 
Slavery became an element of strength, and 
slaves fed aud clothed rebellion. While the 
masters were away in the field, drilling and organ- 
izing and putting the country on a war footing, an 
unpaid laboring population, of at least two millions — 
tor women as well as men are field hands — were at 
home raising corn and pork, and making cloth, or 
else acting as cooks, and teamsters, or digging the 
trenches, building the fortification?, aye, aud fight- 
ing tbe battles of the Rebellion. Does anybody 
doubt now tha'i the slaves have been impressed into 
the military service of the Rebellion ? The Rebel 
pickets on the Rappahannock are, many of tbem, 
black to-day. Yet, for trying to turn si ives against 
their masters even now, after learning by bitter ex- 
perience the folly of the past, the Government is 
denounced, and charged with perverting the war 
into an Abolition raid. Aud men sa-y this who pre- 
tend to be the friends of our soldiers iu the field. I 
wisn }oa could all stand, aa I have stood, 



26 



amoDc the fortifications at Yorktown. 
"Whoever visits them -wiU eee magDificeiit digging; 
he will see a citv buildtd in the groond; he will SfC 
a maze of trenches and embankments many feet 
higb, doubled •with gabions and finished with l laoor, 
■which Eets one counting by the thousands to guess 
how many white men dug their graves as they bur- 
rowed into Yorktown. I would like to look upon 
the man who dare avow that be feels glad to know 
that white men drooped and died in those trenches, 
when black men, used to the beat and malaria, 
might have been found to do the work in half the 
time. ILoud cheere.] Yet all are nicknamed 
fanatics and radicals who have sought to get some 
help out of the negro race. We are told that it 
would be a great calamity to free the slaves. Why / 
Because they would come North. Only think of 
that ! They'll stay South in Slavery, and when thev 
can Btay and have freedom too, they '11 come North 1 
I believe that if you would drain the North 
of negroes, you have only to establish Freedon 
and rights for them South, and they will all go 
there as naturally as a duck takes to water. I want 
the North emptied of its black population ; I want 
to see all the negroes North go South, and am will- 
ing to have them hold all the land there that's left 
over after our soldiers who want to stay, and the 
loyal people are provided for. I would cast out the 
best Kebel in the South to make room for the worst 
loyal man in the North, black or whit;e, and I should 
expect a trade as profitable as Prentice said another 
would be ; he said if the Devil should chaoge 
places with Jeflf. Davis, hell would gain as much in 
malignity as it lost in tal-nt. [Cheers. J 

It is an easy thing to find a slick if you 
want to flog a dog; and I wonder sometimes 
that those who are searching for excuses 
for shirking their dutv are not more mgeDious. 
It is amazing how smali a thing answers 
their purpose. If they can find some mau who has 
been arrested, or some woman of high-fldvored rep- 
utation who has been searched, they seem to thiuk 
they have made out a case in favor of leaving the 
Government to perish. For the madaess ana pique 
of partv they would bury their naiionaluy under the 
waves "of revelation and leave the aunab of free 
Government like a bloody buoy on the sea 
of time, warning the nations of the earth 
to keen aloof from the mighty luin. It 
they can find a fraud on the Government which 
they hav'nt been caught in themselves, they 
are as happy as a boy with a new top. [Cheera. J 
If gome scamp has swindled the Goveroment in the 
charter of a steamboat, or the manufacture of army 
clothing, the whole Administration is held to blame 
for that, and the war ought to stop to prevent 
frauds. Frauds are plenty, no doubt; there are 
miscreants flourishing about your hotels and streets 
who have fattened upon the agony of their country, 
who have bonghi shawls at Stewart's, and diamonds 
at Ball &. Black's, with gains made by smugghng 
felt and shoddy into the coat the poor soldier re- 
lied upon to keep him warm aod dry in the pellitig 
storm. There are men who would bnbe some twin 
rascal to give them a contract to weave the wxadiog 
sheet of their country, expecting to double the profac 
by filling with shoddy aud buying the inspector to 
let it pats. [Groans.] They are not " radical" men 
as a class, however; they are remarkably free from 
" fanaticism." Bat retribution wans tor each one of 
them, tooverlake him sooner or later, and meantime, 
in place of stopping the war, " room for the leper, 
room !" If we are beset by thieves, let honest 
men press forward and close the war at once instead 
of protracting it to fiive thieves a looger run. L,et 
usmake the best and not the worst of our ditHcul- 
tiee. Let every man see carefully where hia lufla- 
ence goes. Let him look to his selfish interests as 
•well as his patriotism. Do you want to embolden 
England to fit out ocean bandits to prey upon your 
commerce, and drive all freights into British bot- 
toma T It you do, yoa have only to tolerate and 
iapport aod vote for politiciana capable of silting 



down here in New-York and intriguing with the- 
British Minister for the humiliation of tbeir coun- 
try at the feet of foreign powers. Do you want to 
breathe new life and hope into rebellion, aid the con- 
federates of rebellion at home and abroad ? If yoa 
do, yon need only encourage parties and newspa- 
pers, and men, who foment divisions here and pub- 
lish them to the world. Do you want to retard and 
prolong ttie war till foreign quarrels come and the 
energies of the people are worn out ? If you do, 
you have only to give ear to those who talk about 
an armistice, or a compromise, or a convention now. 
You have ooly to give them countenance, and some 
other despot "will land an army in Mexico, and flap 
the Monroe doctrine in our faces to make us hang 
our beads the lower, when we remember that e'ght 
vears ago four American Ministers ostentatioosly as- 
sembled at the tomb of Charlemagne, and pro- 
claimed the " Ostend Manifesto." [Applause.] 
Do you want to bind up the gashed bosom of the 
nation ? do you want to restore permanent and uni- 
versal repose? do you want to reinstate the Govern- 
ment in its old glory, and the country in its old 
prosperity ? If you do, you have only to bend all 
the resources we possefs to the annihilation of the 
rebellion. You want no trace till Rebels seek it, and 
they will seek it whenever John Slidell is as well 
convinced that the North is united as he is now that 
Europe won't interfere. Yoa want no compromise 
but the Constitution of the United States as your 
fathers made it. That is the ark of our safety, and 
" except we abide in the ship we cannot be saved." 
[Cheers.] Let U3 cling to the ship which our 
lathers built and launched in darkness and tempests 
upon the tide of time; let us take heed lest she drift 
upon the rocks while we wrangle among ourselves; 
let us feel that our crowning infamy would be to 
lose the vessel from brawls among the crew. Rather 
than tbis should happen, let her go down in the 
shock; rather let the tiarpiea of Europe pluck the 
eagle of the sea; rather than pull down her colore 
ourstlves, 

" Nail to the raasl bcr glorious flsg, 
Streich every threadbare sail, 
And give her to the tJod olf.torm8, 
The lightning aud the gale 1" 

Mr. J. W. Mather sang a song composed for the 
occasion by George H. Boker, commenciug: 

" 'Wben our banner went down, with its ancient reno-wn, 
Betiayed end degraded by treason. 
Did they thioK, as it fell. wh»t a passion would Bwell 
Our hearts when we asked theuj the reason 1" 

The chorus, being taken up by the immense throngs 
had a fine effect. 

The Chairman next introduced the Hon. Geo. W. 
Julian of Indiana as one wlio would show them how 
futile was tbe hope of the Rebels to separate West- 
ern men from the Union. 

Mr. Julian's speech, which was a scathing rebuke 
to Secessionists, and to those who countenanced 
them at the North, was received with vehement ap- 
plause. , 

He was followed by Mr. W. J. A. Fi;ller, who 
held the attention of the audience until the evening 
shadows began to fall, when an adjournment was 
carried. 



STAND NO. 5. 
Speeches of the Mon. Daniel S. VickinsoUr 
Senator liVilson, Gen. Nye, Prof. John 
A. Porter, CJ. W. Elliott, John C. lOLont- 
gomery, and Col. Nugent. 
This stand was located nearly in front of the 
Everett House, on the north side of Union Square, 
and had a fine display of banners and mottoes, and 
the Stars and Stripes floating proudly over it. On 
three sides were the following mottoes: "Oar Coun- 
try, Now and Forever;" •' Pledged to Maintain the 
National Unity," and " Loyalty." Two large ban- 



26 



ners were at the corners, one inacribed "One Flag, 
one Country, one Destiny," and the other, " The 
Jjoyal National League— Pledged to Maintain the 
National Unity." Long prior to 4 o'clock the space 
in front of the stand was filled witli a dense crowd 
— one mass of heads nearly as far as the eye could 
see. 

After music by tbe band, Mr. Charles Butler 
called the meeting to order, and a most impressive 
and fervent prayer was offered by the Rev. Dr. Bel- 
lows. William T. Blodgett read the call tor the 
meeting and the list of officers appointed, and a let- 
ter from Maj.-Gen. Dix, which was received with 
loud cheers. Dispensing with the reading of the 
resolutions, Mr. Butler then introduced the Hon. 
Daniel S. Dickinson, who was received with tu 
multuous applause. 

SPEECH OF THE HON. DANIEL S. DICKINSON. 
Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen: 
It is almost two years since I attended a meeting in 
this very square to discuss public affairs and the con- 
dition of the country. It is two years this day since 
our national flag, our great emblem of hope and 
promise — the Stars and Stripes — was insulted by an 
infamous conspiracy and an infernal Rebellion. 
[Loud applause.] 1 well remember when the news 
reached the city. It was a dark and fearful night — 
the storm was desceoding in its awful density, well 
worthy ot such an occasion as that. The fiend spirit 
of the storm clapped his hands, and it seemed as 
though the evil genius of destruction was brooding 
over us. Two years have now elapsed, and the sun 
is shining genially upon us, the air is warm, the 
germs are shooting, the buds are swelling, the lawns 
are green, the birds are singing, and the popular 
heart is redolent with hope and buoyant with prom- 
ise. [Loud cheers.] Rebellion still exists, but how 
does it exist ? Charleston — the hotbed of secession, 
tbe foul point and nucleus of Rebellion, the cess- 
pool of conspiracy — [Loud cheers and laughter] — the 
heart of all that is infamous and wicked in this mat- 
ter — if she has not already fallen, it is but a question 
of time. [Great applause and cheers.] And the 
owls and ravens who have croaked for blood will 
soon know that ashes and desolation cover the spot 
that has so long menaced the integrity of this Union ! 
[Loud applause.] It is said to be the heart of this 
great movement, and so it is ; and the foul and 
slimy blood it has sent forth through the political 
veins, had it not been resisted by loyal health, 
would have corrupted tbe whole mass. But, thank 
God, from tbe time our Stars and Stripes were in- 
sulted, from the time our sol jiers were butchered in 
Baltimore, while marching to the defense of the 
National Capital — from that time to the present, the 
loyal feeling has been abroad, and it will vindicate 
itself and prove the integrity of the loyal people. 
[Applause.] But he would not discuss the causes — 
he would take the question as he found it. When 
this Rebellion was organized, the spirit of 
party was hushed away, honorable men 
and all came forward to vindicate the integrity of 
the nation and prove themselves worthy descendants 
of Revolutionary sires. [Loud cheers.] He stood 
upon tbat ground, and he defied all the artillery save 
the artillery of Heaven to dislodge him. [Great ap- 
plause; "That's it.''] Bat there were a few miser- 
able politicians who took unto themselves seven 
spirits more wicked than themselves, and entered in 
■and dwelt there, and the last state of politics was 
worse than the first. [Laughter.] There are three 
classes of those who menace the Government. One 
class have arms in their hands; another class have 
politics in their heads, and another class with treason 
in their hearts [loud cheers and laughter I, and they 
are all acting together. [Cheers and applause.] He 
cursed them all as one, and on them all invoked 
maledictions. He denounced them in the name of 
the Union and Constitution and of free Government. 
He was a Democrat of the straightest sect, but he 
did not inquire who administered this Government. 
[Cheers.] It will be time to inquire that when this 



Rebellion is over. Listen not to him who cries, " Lo 
here!" and " Lo there!" and atteaipts to excite 
jiarty prejudices, and to ciimT) up iide tiltliy and slip- 
pery stepstones of party discipline. Inquire only who 
is for his country — who is on the Lord's side. 
We want men to-day that will put down this Rebel- 
lion; we want men whose material and moral muscle 
shall stand out like whip cord, and who will 
give their lives for their country. [Cheers.] He 
nad recently neard of a great political conference 
between Lord Lyons and some individuals who had 
crawled into the Democratic lion-skin. As far as 
Lord Lyons was concerned, representing a Govern- 
ment who considers government and conspiracy as 
the same, who called those who stole and those who 
were stolen from "l)eltii<erents" alike, who fit out 
pirates to cruise not merely on the commerce of the 
United States, but of the world. He did very well. 
[Laughter.] But against these 290s of the Demo- 
cratic party, who are conspiring against the peace 
of the Union, he had no respect. They are Demo- 
crats. Andrew Jackson was a Democrat. He 
wished they would put themselves into communi- 
cation with his spirit for a little while, and if the old 
gentleman carries his cane yet, there would be same 
rapping. [Laughter. A voice — "He would hit 
Fernando Wood on the head."] He would say once 
for all now, and meaning what he said, and speaking 
in italics and capitals, that for pure and unalloyed 
rascality, double-distilled villany, there has not been 
anything recorded since the days of Pontius Pilate 
as infamous as that. [Cheers.] Who are the indi- 
viduals? [A voice — "Wood."] Before he went 
home he was going to look in the Rogues' Gallery 
for their portraits. [Cheers.] He was told they 
were Democrats. Ttjey are demon-crats. [Great 
applause and laughter.] They connived with the 
representative ot a foreign Government for the 
destruction of their country, and their names shall 
stand high on the roll of infamy ! When the 
Rebellion broke out traitors had stolen our arms and 
ships, but now we have raised an army that makes 
tbe earth throb with its tread. The" hope of the 
Rebellion for foreign recognition is gone. Great 
Britain thinks she can see quite as well what is go- 
ing on at a respectable distance — [laughter] — and 
France has enough else to attend to. Great Britain 
did hope that our Government might be destroyed. 
Her rotten aristocracy, that leans up against her 
public and her public debt against them, like two 
drunken men supporting each other — [Laugliter and 
cheers]- and both of them will fall when one gives 
way a little; they hate us, but John Bright and 
Cobden and the masses are in our favor. [Loud 
cheers and applause.] The only hope of Rebellion 
now rests in the division and disloyalty at the 
North, on secret societies and parties inaugurated 
to aid Rebellion under the sacred name of Democ- 
racy. They tell us we must fold our hands and hang 
out the olive branch of peace. He was tor the olive 
branch himself, but he wanted it should he a 
stout tree, and about eight feet from the 
ground — [Great laughter and cheers] — and have a 
stout rope hanging irom the end of it. [Renewed 
applause.] That is the way to treat the leaders of 
this Rebellion. [Cries of " That's it" and cheers.] 
There can be no compromise now. He is a traitor 
to his country, if tie is a man of ordinary intelligence, 
who attempts anything of the kind. This glonous 
meetmg convinced him that the Rebellion was 
doomed. [Cheers.] But these men are afraid that 
Slavery may suffer in this war for the Constitiition. 
He would "not go out of the way to get rid of 
Slavery, but you might as well expect to retain 
the wild game in a country after you have 
cleared it all off as to retain Slavery after 
the war of Revolution has passed over it. [Great 
applause.] The Secessionists have done more 
in one year than the Abolitionists have done in 30. 
[Laughter and cheers.] The old Greek Xenophemes, 
who believed in transmigration, requested his fiiend 
to cease beating a dog, for he thought he recognized 
the voice of a deceased friend in its howl, and so wise 



27 



men don't want Slavery disturbed becaaee they 
think they recognize the ho-wl of a deceased friend 
in it. [Great applause and laughter.] He would 
object to Slavery the same as he would object to 
having a powder house in New-York City ; because 
it is liable at any time to blow us all to pieces. [Loud 
cheering.] Tbe ocean may cast off her mire and 
dirt in the mighty heavings and sgitations of ber 
bosom ; the bghtnings may flash athw artthe slsy ; the 
thunders may war in the distance, and tbe winds 
may bowl, but the sun of this morn will rise again 
with the promise of a fair day, and God's children 
will stand upon the great pjinciple of equality in 
this Western Hemisphere. [Tremendous applause 
and three hearty cheers for the speaker.] 

After an interlude of music by the band, Mr. 
Butler introduced the Hon. Henry Wilson of Maes, 
who was received with three rousing cheers. 

SPEECH OF THE HON. HENRY WILSON OF MAS- 
SACHUSETTS. 
Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens of New- 
Tork: The banners of more than a thousand regi- 
ments of loyal men of our country are to-day wav- 
ing in the beams of yonder rolling sun in the land 
of Rebellion. Three quarters of a million of our 
countrymen, of our neighbors, of our friends, are 
bearing the banners of their country to-day on the 
Boil of the Rebel States. They are around Charles- 
ton [cheers] ; on the shores of North Carolina; with 
Banks near the mouth of the Mississippi; with Grant 
around Vicksburg; with Rosecrans around the im- 
mortal field of Murfreesboro [loud cheers] ; with 
Fighting Joe Hooker on the banks of the Rr.ppahan- 
nock. Your voices, the beating of your loyal hearts, 
will reach them ; and as they look the foes of their 
country in tbe face, they will be stronger because 
,the men of New-York are behind them. [Cheers.] 
Our brave soldiers in tbe field in the campaign of 
Gen. Stoneman, one of our bravest and truest sol- 
diers, say that while thev hate tbe Rebel in front, 
ihey despise the traitor in the rear [cheers], and they 
would delight to hang the one as well i'.s to shoot 
the other. That is the sentiment of three-fourths of 
a million of brave men who are bearing the banners 
of the Republic. The gentleman who preceded me 
said to you, and he said truly, that the hopes of the 
Rebel chiefs were in the division of the people of the 
loyal States. It was my fortune — my sad fortune — 
to sit with those Rebel leaders in the session of '60 
and '61. Then they were preparing tbe country for 
Revolution. Day after day we sat in the Senate of 
the United States — in the House of Representatives 
— and saw these Rebel leaders plot for the overthrow 
of the Republic; and I say to you to-day, gentlemen, 
that their hopes rested upon two things — one, the in- 
tervention of England or France through the power 
of King Cotton, and the other, division in the North- 
ern States. They believed that the City of New- York 
would raise the cry of " bread or blood " — they be- 
lieved that the loyal men hastening to the defense of 
the menaced capital would be smitten down on the 
pavements of the City of New-York. Jefferson Da- 
vie, in the session of 1850, said to me on the floor of 
the Senate that he was assured, in the language of 
one of his friends in the North, that if this contest 
came to blows they would throttle us in our tracks. 
But, gentlemen, you all remember that when, two 
years ago, the banners of our country went down 
beneath the consuming fires of the batteries upon 
Fort Sumter, that the people rose in their majesty, 
as one man, for the support of the country. [Cheers.] 
But you remember aleo, with what amazement the 
Rebel chiefs received the intelligence of that uprising 
of the freemen of the North. RusesU tells us, in his 
Diary, that he found everywhere in the South tbe 
greatest amazement that the people of the North 
were united to uphold the cause of our country. 
But, gentlemen, we know while the people of this 
country, the masses, rose to sustain their Govern- 
ment ; to sustain the cause of human liberty in the 
Western World, that there were men who bowed to 
public opinion, but whose hearts were black with 



sympathy with traitors. [" That's bo."] Misfor- 
tunes came upon us, death entered almost all our 
dwellings, our brave men were smitten down on 
many battle-fields, trials came upon tbe people, our 
hearts throbbed saaly and heavily, and then it wae 
that these men the Rebel ctiiefs relied upon to come 
to the rescue andsave their. — to bathe our streets in 
blood and overthrow the Government of the coun- 
try — began to demand a peace that was to blot this 
nation forever from the annals of mankind. But, 
gentlemen, thanks to God, thanks to the people of this 
country ! tbey are rising again, and Copperheadism 
is slinking away. The heel of the American people 
is pretsing that serpent's head. Ard now, gen- 
tlemen, I say to you to-night that while the Rebel 
chiefs give up the cause of foreign intei-vention, they 
yet rely on the secret orders of the Knights of the 
Golden Circle; they rely upon men who preach 
peace, when there can be no peace, with the salva- 
tion ol our country. [Cheers.] But, gentlemen, 
my faith is strong — strong in the people of the 
United States, strong in the progress of human 
events, strong in Democratic institutions, and strong 
in that God that rules over the affairs of men. 
[Cheers.] The cause in which we are engaged is the 
cause of national unity, and the life of this nation; 
the existence of this North American Republic, is at 
iseue; and that is not all, the cause of human lib- 
erty in America is at issue — the cause of toiUng mil- 
lions of the North American Republic. There is an 
influence on earth that elevates and adorns human 
character that is with us and fighting for us in this 
great battle in which we are engaged. There is not 
amanwto cannot take the cause of our country 
homo with him to-night and xead his Bible, and on 
his bended knees invoke the blessing of Almighty 
God upon the cause of our common country. It is a 
cause that a man may be proud to toil for, labor for, 
and, if need be, proudly to die for. [Cheers.] Up 
in tHe interior of this State a gray-beaded old sol- 
dier lay djing. In his last moments, when life was 
flickering, he called for a glass of wine, and, holding 
it up, said: "God bless my country, the United 
States of America !" and the brave old soldier 
passed away witli the noble and pious sentiment 
upon his Mps. There is not a man in America that 
may not invoke these utterances of Gen. Sumner, 
and ask God to bless our country, the United States 
of America. [Cheers and the boom of cannon,] 
We should support the Government of our country, 
not because it is a Republican Administration, for I 
do not ask it. I would support a Democratic Ad- 
ministration, because my duty to my cormtry de- 
manded it. [" Bravo, bravo.'"' Cheers.] But I 
am proud to know that they are giving to this Ad- 
ministration all their moral support and all the 
votes they have to give. On the Committee of 
Military Affairs in the Senate there were 
four Republicans and three Democrats, and of 
6,825 names that passed before that Commit- 
tee since the war commenced, there never 
has been a party division in that Committee. 
[Loud applause.] We should forget all partisanship 
and bury all party feelings deeper than ever plummet 
sounded [cheers] , and go for our country, our whole 
country, and nothing but our country. [Great ap- 
plause and cheers.] He hailed these Loyal Leagues 
springing up over the country, and all should cooperate 
to fire thb hearts and nerve the arms of our brave 
soldiers. [Loud applause.] All party conflicts and 
organizations dwarf and sink down in the presence 
of the mighiy events which are upon us. The high- 
est and loftiest duty ever committed to men is com- 
mitted to us now, and that, duty is to save our coun- 
try, to preserve the life of our nation. [A cry—" We 
will."] We will do it. I entertain not a shadow of 
a doubt of the triumph of our cause. [Applause.] I 
never have doubted amid defeat and darkness. [A 
cannon boom. ] I have had undoubting faith that this 
people would rise ; that they would stand by their 
country ; that they would cultivate patriotism and 
toleration ; and above all, that endurance that wine 
and triumphs in the end, I have seea mor« euthu- ' 



28 



aiaem in other days than in this, bat we have now 
come to the poher second thought ■which is based 
upon the eentiuient and the heart, npon the convic- 
tions and the judgment, npon the aspiratiot s and the 
Bonl of the people. It is the result of reflection — it 
comes from trial, and it will live and last, and carry 
us gloiiouely and triumphantly through. [Great ap- 
plause, and three cheers and a tiger for Mr. Wilson.! 
Gen. James W. Nye was next introduced to the 
immense audience, who welcomed him with loud ap- 
plause. 

SPEECH OF GEN. KYE. 
He was no stranger to them, and he felt quite at 
home in the old city of New-York. [Applause.] 
He had seen her thousands marshalled before, but 
they were never gathered on a more eventful oc- 
casion. He stood in the National Capitol when the 
news came that Fort Sumter had been fired npon, and 
he made a covenant that he would never lay down 
his arms till the glory of that old flag was redeemed. 
[Great applause.] When he went to his new home, 
3,000 miles away, he met there Lis old acquaintance, 
the Stars and StnoeE — [Cheers] — and there it should 
float forever. [Great applause.] Whatever may be 
the fate of the Atlanic slope, there shall be one 
Switzerland in Ameiica. [Load Cheers.] Tney 
would barricade their mountain fastnesses and the 
old flag should float there forever. [Grfat applause.] 
The stars are emblematical of the eyes of a watch- 
ful and vigilant people, and the stripes are em- 
blematical of the tribute our fathers paid to Great 
Britain in two ware. [Tremendous applause.] He 
thought this Rsbelliou a good thing. The spirit of 
'76 had died out. It needed a new regeneration — a 
new baptism — and that baptism needed to be of 
blood, and we have got it. Though it may clothe 
our famihes in the habiliments of mourning, yet the 
glorious future will be a recompense for all of our 
sacrifices. We. will have a peace that will be per- 
manent. Kebellion at the South and Copperheadism 
at the North will be seen walking two by two in 
the political Potter's field as the pairs went into the 
Ark, and there they will be buried forever. [Tre- 
mendous applause.] And they ought to be. [Ap- 
plause. Cries of "Good!" "Amen!'] We are 
told that this rebellion cannot be put down by arms; 
bat these Eebels have chosen the arbitrament of 
bullets instead of ballots, and we will beat them at 
that. [Great applause, " We will I"] And the man 
IB blmoer than a meadow mole and deafer than an 
adder that can see anything else than our fiual tri- 
umph in this struggle. [Loud cheers.] They tell 
ns we stall be burdened with heavy- taxes; but 
when he saw a man with a pencil behind his ear 
figuring up how much he can make by this war he 
isa traitor. [Great applause, and cries of " Good !" 
"good!" " That's so."] He wanted to see men 
inquiring what sacriticee they could make for their 
country. [Loud cheers.] Ue had a kind of in- 
spiration that to-day, and at this hour, the Stars and 
Stripes floated over Port Sumter [trenieudoas ap- 
plause], gold-dealers and Copperheads to the con- 
trary. [14enewed applause and liughter]. Or if it 
does not now, it soon will. [Loud cheers.] He knew 
one thing that Copperheads oidn'i know, aijd thank 
God tbey knew a great many tbiogs he did not. 
[Renewed laughter and applause.] He knew enough 
to love this country with as undying a love as a eon 
lor the ruother that bore him — [great applause] — and 
he did n't know enough to plot treason against it. 
[Renewed applause.] He believed that all bell and 
Reheldom combined could not destroy this country. 
[Loud cheers.] Men of New- York! are you ready 
to maintiiiu tbis Union ? [Cries of "Yes," "yes," 
" we will.' ] Tben I will go West and report that 
New-York is all right. [Great cbeers.] If there is 
a man who has not faith enough to believe the coun- 
try must succeed, let him go among the Copperheads. 
[Great laughter and applause.] A more dreadful 
fate awaits all these classes ot Rebels than that of 



the falling avalanche; theirs will be an eternal, 
abiding sleep, and one would doubt whether, in the 
wi:dom of God, t' ey wi 1 be disturbed in the morn- 
ing of the reenrrection — [loud cheers and laughter] — 
unlets it is to consign them to a deeper hell. [Great 
applause. "They will file off" to the left then."] 
Felli)W-citizens, I thank you for this hearing. [" Go 
on," "go on."] It is all very easy to say "go on," 
but where is the wind to come from ? [Great laugh- 
ter.] He had been speakingat anotherstand, and was 
tired. But he would go on a pilgrimage from the 
heaving billows of the Atlantic to the quiet waters 
of the Pacific to see restored on this continent that 
glorious and benignant peace that wiil bring with it 
one country, on» people — and that we will have. 
He would now ask them to give three cheers for the 
old flag. [Given heartily, and three cheers for the 
speaker.] 

Prof. John A. Porter of Yale College was next 
introduced. He said to-day he was not ashamed to 
coEfess himself a citizen of Connecticut. [Cheers, 
and three rousing cheers for Connecticut.] Copper- 
headism had made its strike there, and been tram- 
pled into the earth. [Loud cheers.] The people of 
Connecticut and New-York are prepared to stand 
by the flag until it shall float in triumph over all 
this continent. [Loud cheers.] 

SPEECH OF JOHN C. MONTGOMERY. 
Mr. John C. Montgomery was introduced, and 1 
related to the audience a story of Mason, with whom 
he had been acquainted. Mason, on one occasion, 
on being introduced by Mr. Montgomery as his Dem- 
ocratic friend, said: " Mr. Montgomery, I wish you 
would introduce me, not as your Democratic but as 
your Republican friend, for, by G — d, I don't think 
Democracy is conetitutional." 

SPEECH OF G. W. ELLIOT. 
Mr. G. W. Elliot, a merchant from London, 
was next introduced. He said that the real true, 
honest heart of the English people sympathized with 
the Americans in this struggle. [A voice — " Can't 
see it."l The aristocracy and the would-be aristoc- 
racy mivht desire to see this Government destroyed. 
England is not easily moved, and it takes a long 
time to move the great masses, but the great popular 
heart o; that country eympatbizes thoroughly with 
the Noi th in this struggle. He believed this to be 
the greatest nation on earth, and engaged in one of 
the greatest struggles the earth ever saw. Their 
success would not only be a victory here, hut a tri- 
umph for Freedom all over the world. [Loud 
cheers.] He had always said that the great City of 
New- York was loyal, aud if he was told they were 
in favor ot Slavery and Secession he said that was a 
lie! [Cheers and applause. A voice — "Go on; give 
it to 'cm. ; but The London Times won't print your 
speech." Laughter.] 

SPEECH OF COL. NUGENT, OF THE "69tH." 
Mr. Butler then introduced Col. Nugent, who 
was received with three rousing cheers. He said: 

My Friends: I did not come here to make a 
speech, but as a spectator, to look on. But I am 
very proud to see such a spirit of patriotism as I 
have seen here this afternoon ; but I would be 
prouder to see one half of you down in the Army of 
the Potomac, to fill up the broken regiments there. 
[Loud cheers.] I see a great many here 1 would 
like as recruits for the gallant 69ih. [A voice — 
" Give me $l,O0O and I will go;" hisses and cries 
of "Copperhead."] We don't want you. Sir; we 
want true men and volunteers. [Cheers] But, 
gentlemen, I am not; accustomed to public speaking 
and do not letl much at home here; put me at the 
head of my regiment and I am at home. [Greait 
applause.) 



29 



After sorae remarks by P. E. Lambert the vast 
audience dispersed, the band playing "Old Hund- 
red," and other iomsic, and the crowd giving three 
tremendous cheers for the Union. 



STAND No. 6. 

Speeches by David Dudley Field, Gen. Nye, 

Cicorgc W. Curtis, S. V. Chittenden, 

Jauies A. Briggs, Thomas Parsons, Oen. 

Cra^vford, Theodore Tilton, and others. 

Stand No. 6 was located in the noith-eastern angle 
of Union Square. It bore the motto, "A common 
Union to maintain the power, glory, and integrity of 
the Nation." Salutes pealed from the lips of aitille- 
ry, and at about 4 o'clock Wiegand's band struck up 
the Graod March from " Le Prophete." 

Wm. E. Dodge, esq., presided, and in opening 
the meeting said they were resolved not to cease do- 
ing till we should be a united and happy people. 

Prayer whs then offered by the Kev. Thomas E. 
Vermilye, D. D. 

The list of officers of the meeting, the address, and 
the resolutions were read by John Austin Ste- 
vens, jr., and adcp'ed. After mutic by tiie band, 

David Dudley Field, esq., was introdaced, and 
spoke as follows: 

SPEECH OF DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 

Fellow-citizens: If I were asked to express in 
three words what appears to me the greatest 
needs of the country at this hour, I should 
say unity, courage, constancy. Without unity, our 
great preponderating force dwindles into in^ignifi- 
cance. Twenty-three millions wield undoubtedly 
enormous power, equal to the subjugation of all tire 
Rebels in the rebellious States. But if the twenty- 
three millions were made up of thirteen millions 
loyal and ten d sloyal, the latter might neutralize an 
equal number of the former, and the force of the 
twenty-three millions would really be repreeented 
by three million?. So of greater or less proportions. 
We are, therefore, under a necessity, moral" and po- 
litical, to labor with all our might to produce agree- 
ment among our people. The nearer we can come 
to absolute unanimity the better. To that end, we 
must lay aside minor differences, and confine our- 
selves to the few essential, fundamental political 
truths and rules of conduct that have relaUon only 
to the overthrow of the Rebellion. By these 
means, and these alone, shall we be enabled to col- 
lect and use all our resources, for the maintenance of 
the power, and the integrity of the nation, in its 
whole territorial extent. Bat without courage 
numbers will avail us little. It should seem strange 
that an exhortation to courage can be neceesaiy 
among the children of our fathers. Our people have 
won tbeir way by courage to their present expanded 
greatness. From tte time when our fathers landed 
on these shores, through all the hardships of settle- 
ment, ihrough poverty and want, through perils from 
Indian savages, through colonial wars, throuKh the 
war for independence, through the long period of 
uncertainty and depression which ensued through 
the political crisis which resulted in the establish- 
ment of the Constitution, the war of 1812, aiid the 
war with Mexico, courage has been almost a 3yno- 
nym fur the Amerifian character. But there is a 
moral as well as a physical courage, which shrinks 
from no sacrifices, looks unappalled upon 
reverses, hears with equanimity of delays and 
mistakes, and cairies itself cheerfully, loiti- 
ly, through all vicissitudes. This kind of 
courage, not lees than that which storms for- 
tresses and leads columna in the field, is needed r>y 
U8 now; a courage which rejects the counsels of the 
timid and time-serving, spurns every sug^jestion of 
ingloiioas peace, sends none bat eucouiaging words 



to our soldiers in the ranks, and makes ready to 
send more soldiers, and as many more as the country 
may call, if it call tor all we h*ve. And yet, with- 
out conbtancy, courage may fail at last. In the 
difEicult and novel circumstances in which the 
country now stands, we are liable to have lepeated 
failures. Inexperience leads to mistakes; the diffi- 
culty of adjusting untried means to ends proposed 
brings after it frequent miscarriages, and these tend 
to beget in the end distrust, and the fear that we 
may not after all be able to overcome the difficul- 
ties ia our way. Bui this is not the proper feeling 
for a heroic ptople. Constancy under all fortunes 
is the great Koa an virtue, as the opposite quality 
is the curse of fickle and ECtoudary nations. 
" Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel," 
was the prophesy of the patriarch to a 
portion of bis children. So it is now. and 
so it ever will be; those nations only can hope to 
stand at the head of the world which never despair. 
Let us, fellow-citizens, stand together; show the 
courage of our fathers, and the constancy of our race. 
So will our future be lull of promise. Then shall 
we rise soperior to any disaeter and every embar- 
rassment; and our children will t bank God for our 
unity, our courage, and our constancy throughout 
the perilous times of the slaveholders' rebellion. 

Mr. F. was frequently interrupted by applause 
during the delivery of his address. 

Toe Chairman next introduced Gov. Nye of 
Nevada Territory, who was greeted with three 
cheers. 

SPEECH OF GOVERNOR NYE. 

Gov. Nye said it was not with him a matter of 
faith; he knew there was enough of the spirit of 
our Revolutionary fathers yet circulating in the 
veins of their sons to redeem the flag under all cir- 
cumstances from dishonor at home or intervention 
from abroad. The Republic would live, no matter 
what the ordeal through which it was called to pass. 
He would address Copperheads, if there were any 
present, for he came not to call righteous, but sinners 
to repentence, " They did not want negro regi- 
ments!" He would arm a mule to kill Rebels. He 
would arm the devil himself if he would consent to 
serve, because that would be meeting his equal face 
to face. [Laughter.] If the Copperheads wanted 
to avoid conscription let them stop discouraging en- 
listments in colored regiments. Those people who 
talked about resisting the conscription act had better 
ask themselves whetber tbey wanted the field of war 
transferred from Virginia to Manhattan Island. Gov. 
Nye continued at some length in his characteristic 
strain, mingling humor and argument. 

SPEECH OP GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 
Mr. Curtis on being introduced was received with 
apt'lause. He said: 

Mr. Chairman and fellow citizens, two years ago, 
when that flag came down, for the first time shot at 
in dishonor, and disgraced by fellow-citizens of 
ours, and American citizens, there was but one feel- 
ing that ran through thit^ laud — a feeling so shudder- 
ing and appalling, that it was as when a great ship 
suddenly comes into the wind, and every inch of canvas 
flutters, and fur a moment there is doubt whether 
the voyage shall be continued or whether the ship 
shall there go down, "iou remember, fellow-citi- 
zens, that the answer was given upon this place, 
where we Etand to-day. You remember that the 
first answer was given by eloquent voices, whom it 
is well for us at this rnomeut to recall, because 
they were voices of those who have sealed iheir 
fidelity with their life's blood. Here, within the range 
of my voice at this moment, stood the gallant MU- 
chel, born in Kentucky; and he, after his career, ia 
silent. But you know his story. Here, within 
sound of my voice, stood the great- 
hearted Bakei-. He, too, has sealed the truth «f 
his words. Eloquent in their lives, fellow-citizens, 
they were still more eloquent ia their death; 



30 



and tbey are forever eloquent, speaking to you and 
me, to our children's children, forever, in our hearts 
and in our history. That -was the reeponse given 
then. Two years have passed. There are no longer 
hut 800 soldiers, and hut $500 in the Treasury. Did 
yon hear them speak ? Then bend your head, and 
strain your ears this moment, and you shall hear also 
the thunders of an eloquence that shakes the very 
air, that dazzles the very splendor of the midnight 
heavens — the thanders of the belching fires of Du- 
pont and the brave men with him, who now declare 
that that ilag that was pulled down in weakness 
shall be raised in power; and that as when it fell it 
was the glittering shroud of every party line, and of 
all party differences whatsoever, so that now there 
are, there can henceforth be, but two parties in the 
land — they who stand in open rebellion, with guns 
and cannon, against it, and all other men who are 
resolved, God helping, if chey cannot do the work, 
then they will fall doing it, and transfer it to their 
lineage to do, and their children's children, until all 
beneath that pall of party shall upbear the flag, and 
the stars are restored once more to the heavens 
whence they came. [Applause.] This, fellow-citi- 
zens, and not less, is the significance ot the hour. It 
is to answer for us all whether we are a nationality ; 
it is to answer for us all whether there is something 
below all our ties, whatever they may be. This is a 
contest which has never changed its character; this 
is a contest, from the beginning, simply of the 
ballot-box. It is not long since I stood 
upon a platform like this side by side with 
a man whose every political theory I 
doubt not, differs absolutely and radically ' from 
mine. The gentleman of whom I speak is a name 
known to you, justly dear to you, peculiarly honored 
by every loyal man in the land at this moment, for 
it is James T. Brady of this city. [Applause.] 
With Mr. Brady, bound upon the same mission, we 
went into the State of Connecticut, not as Con- 
necticut men, but as citizens of the United States, 
interested to know whether other citizens ot the 
United States living in that State were willing to 
abandon the Union, dishonor the flag, and consent 
to common ruin. We stood there side by side simply 
to defend the ballot-box. Whatever differences Mr. 
Brady and I had before — and I believe they were 
radical upon every question — the moment the 
assault was made upon that bcx, that instant Mr. 
Brady and every man like him in the land, and 
every loyal man of whatever complexion, knew 
no other party than the party that would restore, by 
bullets if necessary, by every measure which the 
Administration, which is the representative of this 
country, might call for, the ballot-box -in all its 
purity, as the sole and single arbiter of every politi- 
cal difference in this land. That, fellow-citizens, 
was the significance of the meeting here two 
years ago. 1 stand to you, I truer, as a loyal 
inan. I believe only one man in tbds city has 
made it his boast that be is not loyal. [A Voice : 
" Fernando Wood."] It seems to me, fellow-citi- 
zens, that he might well have spared his breath ; for 
I never knew that any one suspected that gentleman 
of loyalty; or, if loyal, he had long ago given it 
the benefit of the statute of limitation. [Laughter.] 
But when he says there is no such sentiment as loy- 
alty in this land, I hope the occasion of the hour 
may take him through the square in which we 
stand, that he may see the hundreds and thousands 
of men, whose brothers, sons, friends, stand embat- 
tled from the Chesapeake lo the Mississippi, by sea 
and by land, brave men, united by one sentiment, 
and one sentiment only, and that is an unshrinking 
and eternal loyalty to the Government which their 
fathers made, which they have received, and which, 
by the grace of God, they will transfer imchanged 
to their children. [Applause.] Now, then, fellow- 
citizens, understand this one point, that the efibrt to 
destroy the Nation, which is no less than the United 
States of America, is simply an effort to 
undo the laws of God. The Union of 
thb United States is an iastinct. From 



the instinct of union in the people the Constitution 
of the United States sprang. For it was the senti- 
ment of union that made the Constitution, and not 
the Constitution that made the Union. The Union 
is an effect of our existence; it is a thought, it is a 
sentiment, you cannot repeal it, you cannot touch it 
in the least point, for it is in the heart of every citi- 
zen. And when we say Union, and when I stand here 
and say to you that I belong to the Union, and that 
that flag stands for the Union, you all understand me 
to mean precisely what an Englishman means when 
he says England', precisely what a Frenchman means 
when he says France — and that is the essential 
nationality of this people. The Union is the form 
only, the nation is the soul. To save the Union is to 
save the nation. And, therefore, at this moment first 
and most truly in this land the Union man is he who 
is resolved that there is, that by the grace of God 
God there shall be but one Government as there is 
but one nation within our domains^that either this 
Rebellion shall march trailing its flag over us, until 
above our shame and disgrace its flag sends its 
curdling and chilling shadow deep into the waters 
of the land, or that the people of the United States 
of America — knowiug that the Union is the nation- 
will march triumphant over them, bearing that flag 
full of the hues of Heaven, until its ancient splen- 
dors shall flash the liberty with which it was first 
baptized far over the sparkling waters of the North. 
[Applause.] Stand fast, thea, by the Union. Un- 
derstand that when the Continental CongresB de- 
clared, adjourning, as it did adjourn, that its best 
men might make the Constitution of >he United 
States, that the cause of the United States is the 
cause of human nature. It is therefore that thie 
Rebellion is so envenomed, and therefore that this 
Rebellion stands so fast and so ably, because It 
knows that by the necessary development, by the 
necessary growth of the people of this country, 
whatever interferes with the rights, with the 
liberties, with the peace of any solitary citizen in the 
land, wherever he may be, that touches the liberty 
of all; and no man will rest, the nation itself will 
heave, until the rights of every man have been fully 
vindicated. Now, fellow-citizens, this being so, the 
experience of two years has shown us two things: 
in the first place, that this nation is resolved to main- 
tain its nationality; and in the second place, that 
there is no conceivable result possible to the war in 
which we are engaged except the absolute victory 
or the absolute subjugation of the Government of 
the United States. [Applause, j There is no possible 
ground between this. The gentlemen who have for 
a moment, proposed compromise do injustice to the 
policy and sagacity of the men who have reared the 
black flag of rebellion. The men who have raised 
the flag of disunion do an equal injustice to the 
sworn conviction of every loyal citizen in the 
land. Therefore, understand me, that there 
can be but one of these two issues. You know 
which. In your own experience it is written in 
many a household of yours in the finger of blood — 
it is written in your hearts, deep down, with all the 
earnestness of the most vital conviction. Under- 
stand that the moral of to-day is the moral of 
two years ago; that there is henceforth no party 
among loyal men. We know there is none. We 
know this, fellow-citizens, that old Jefferson Davis, 
of Mississippi, was no sounder man tried by party 
standard than the old white-haired man whose elo- 
quence has thrilled you this afternoon. Whatever 
Jefferson Davis was as a party man that was Dan- 
iel S. Dickinson. And while the hand of Jeff. 
Davis was raised to stab us, you know how the 
tongue of Mr. Dickinson has waved like a tongue of 
fire, defending and again defeading as he has to- 
day, the outraged honor of our dearest common 
mother and native land. [Applause.] And you 
know further, that however good a party 
leader in his day Mr. Breckinridge may have been, 
that Mr. Douglas was no way ii5erior, and his last 
words were of the most unswerving loyalty to hiB 
country and to the Union of the States. [Applause.l 



31 



And, fellow-citizem, it was my special pleasure to 
say, when it was my privilege to be in Concecticut, 
that if they had produced in Connee ieut one known 
in party times as a Democrat, we in New-York bad 
produced another man known in party days as a 
Democrat; and that if Isaac Toucey had done all he 
could, as his own letters testify, to haul down that 
flag and disgrace it beneath the heel of Eebellion, 
that John A. Dix — a man, and no lees — had not 
hesitated to make the telegraph and every brave 
man's heart thrill with the message: "Whoever 
hauls down that flag, shoot him on the spot !" [Ap- 
plause.] Yes, lellow-cilizens, there we stood then, 
and here we stand now, unchanged. The ship was 
tossing then ; I grant you the ship is toesing now. But 
then it was in the wind; now it has laid its course; 
it has taken the full breeze, and its course is onward. 
But this understand, that while the tempest howls, 
while the ship quivers in its dreadful billows red 
with blood, what is the duty of every loyal man; 
what will every loyal man do ? He wiU ask him- 
self but one question: Does the captain, do the crew, 
mean right ? Then, if they do, I will not trouble 
myself lo have a better captain I might know; I 
will not trouble myself to call over the names of a 
crew that might seem abler than this. The ship is 
nere; the tornado is here; the captain is here; "the 
crew is here — we are all in for the voyage. And 
whoever, knowing that that captain and crew desire 
only the safety of the ship and the passengers, who- 
ever for an instant raises a voice against them, who- 
ever himself desponds, desires or endeavors to seduce 
loyal and brave men of the land from their obedience, 
mark that man well, for he shows himself a lineal 
descendant of the Copperhead in Eden, who tried 
to seduce Eve from her obedience. [Laughter and 
applause. 1 Stand fast, fellow-citizens, then, I ab- 
jure you; stand fast by the flag which is the sym- 
bol of all that 18 precious to you — of all the liberties 
you ever had — ot principles that at this moment keep 
this city m perfect peace ; that at this moment main- 
tain quiet throughout the broad region that is not 
touched by the hand of Kebellioa. Stand fast by 
the flag, knowing this, tbat if we are not enough; 
that if, m our day, thio tight cannot be fought out; 
that it was a fight which was born in us; it was 
bred in our bones; it flows in our blood; we are 
tied up to that issue; and when we lay iu the 
graves those who went from us with bloom in their 
cheeks, with vigor in their voices, all that can move 
in man — remember that when they went we held 
ourselves in camp by our firesides ready to follow ; 
we hold ourselves — every man of us who is loyal 
holds himself, at this moment, only waiting to hear 
what the Government, which is the representative 
of the whole people, demands of him, in order 
to say, " Ready ! Ready ! I am here !" [Tremen- 
dous applause.] Still more: If all who have 
gone— Grod rest their souls ! — if all who are ready 
to go, young men who are stroag men now, wiU not 
suffice, then shall the time come when each one of us 
will transfer it to his child, as the most sacred duty 
he can perform, that he shall neither spare himself 
nor allow his children's children to be spared. And 
renewing once more our vows to the dear old flag, 
we will vow — as we do now here — God witnessing 
the vow, and the shades of the august dead, who 
have hallowed this very spot with devotion to the 
Union; and witnessing the heavens, we do here once 
more vow that, pure as its white, bright as its red, 
fixed as its stars, is our faith in the national honor, 
in the national glory that that flag represents ; and 
though it should cost us our lives, they shall be 
given, and the war shall go on — it shall be chroni- 
cled in American blood — until that flag floats on 
every spot of American soil as calmly in the evening 
air as it hangs before you now. [Great and long- 
continued applause.] 

SPEECH OF S. B. CHITTENDEN. 
After music, S. B. Chittenden, esq., was intro- 
duced, who said that he had risen from a sick bed to 
attend the meeting. He denounced the aspeision 



that the League was a scheme of Federal office- 
holders for unworthy ends as false. The Rebellion 
must be put down by shot and shell — and it could 
never be done by conditional patriots. Those who 
were not unconditionally for the war were against 
it. There was but one question before the Ameri- 
can people — victory or death ! All other questions 
had been passed upon aud adjourned. We must 
subdue Jefferson Davis or he u~. To divide the 
Union would be to sever the spinal column of the 
nation, and death would be the inevitable result. 
He advocated the setting aside of all party issues, 
and concluded by adjuring them by the memories of 
the past, the greater and more glorious promisee of 
the future, to swear that so long asihey lived they 
would be loyal to their country and to the flag that 
waved over " the land of the free and the home of 
the brave." [Applause.] 

Music followed, and there were loud cries for Fre- 
mont. The Chairman stated Mr. Fremont was 
coming. [A voice, "We don't want Mr. Fremont, 
but Gen. Fremont."] It was then announced that ' 
Gen. Fremont had started to come to the stand, but 
was unable to do so on account of the pressure of the 
crowd. At the same time a dense mass of humanity 
was seen surging and veering round the Everett 
House, in the midst of which was the carriage of 
Gen. Fremont, proceeding up Fourth avenue. 

Mr. Lambert, " the Irish apprentice boy," fol- 
lowed in a few remarks, asking why his country was 
not represented from the stand, as it was nobly rep- 
resented on the battle-field, and referred to the repu- 
diation of Fernando Wood and his doctrines by the 
Mozart Regiment. 

SPEECH OF THE HON. JAMES A. BRIGGS. 
The Hon. James A. Briggs did not mince matters 
in defining his position. Treason, be believed, 
attainted the blood, and he was for hanging traitors, 
proven to be such, whether South or North. Mr. 
Briggs drew a comparison betjveen Connecticut 
Seymour and New-York Wood, as they sat down to 
figure up the result of the election in the land of 
steady habits, and the two surviving enemies in a 
famished city, described by Byron, when they 

" Lifted up their eyes and beheld 
Each other's aspects, saw, and shrieked, and died ; 
Even of their mutual hideousness they died, 
Witnessing each the other was one upon whose blow 
Patriotism had written, Traitor !" [Applause, j 

. SPEECH OF THEODORE TILTON. 

Theodore Tilton was the last speaker. In the 
course of his remarks he said that the shadows of 
even were descending, and a shadow had also passed 
over our flag, but it would rise out of it resplendent, 
and its glory in the future should exceed any glory 
of the past. The lesson they were to carry home 
was that there should be no sinking of hope for the 
Republic, but there should be a resurrection for it; 
for as God lived, liberty should triumph in this land. 
The Republic was not dead, but the Slave Power 
that struck the Republic was dead. All wars had 
their compensations; and, as the bow of promise 
came out of the stormv sky, so liberty should rise 
out of the storm of thfs time, and the East and the 
West, the North and the South— as did the Isle of 
Cypress, according to the mythological tale, at the 
tread of Venus — should blossom with the flowers of 
peace. Mr. Tilton coucluded by saying, " May God 
save the Republic in His own time, aud to IIis own 
praise ! ' 

The meeting at this stand, about 6J o'clock, closed 
with three cheers for the Flag of the Union. 

Thomas Parsons, esq., of St. Louis, said that he 
hailed Irom a State claimed by Jeft'. Davis. He was 
the first man that hung out a Union flag when that 
city was under Rebel eway. He was a Jackson- 



32 



VanBnren-Polk Democrat, bat not a Buchanan 
Democrat, nor Copperhead. [Applau-:e.] 

Gen. Crawford, one of the men who defended 
Fort Sumter, was introduced, and gracefully ac- 
knowledged the enthuBiastic reception accorded to 
him. 

Eeception of the Delegation from the 
LoTAL Leagce of PHILADELPHIA. — The De'egatiou 
from the Loyal League of Philadelphia, to attend 
the Great MasB Meetmg of Saturday, arrived at the 
foot of Conrtlandt street about noon, wbere they 
were met by a Committee of tLe Loyal Leagues of 
this city,with carriages. The distinguished guests 
weretaken to Delmonico's and welcomed by R. B. 
Mintmrn and; tbe Rev. Dr. Bellows. Morton Mc- 
Michael, esq., Chairman of the Philadelphia Dele- 
gation responded in a very happy and patriotic 
speech, after which all partook of a lunch pro- 
vided for their entertainment. From Delmoni- 
co's tbe guests were escorted to the headquar- 
ters of the Union League Club, and invited to 
participate in the proceedings of raising and dedi- 
cating a flag. They were then escorted^ to seats at 
the various stands. At 7 o'clock the JL»elegate8 of 
the New Yoik Union Leagues dined by invitation 
with the Philadelphia Delegates at the Astor House. 
Covers were laid for 150 persons. 

When the cloth was removed, Bpeechea were made 
by B. H. Brewster, esq., Charles Gibbons, efq., 
BLenryC. Carey, esq., and others of Philadelphia, 
Senator Wilson of Maesachusetts, Charles King, 
esq. of this city, and others. Morton McMicbael, 
esq., presided. There were about one hundred 
Pbiladelpbians present, among whom were George 
H. Buker, esq.. Judge Kelley, John B. Kenney, and 
ex-Mayor Charles Gilpin. The aftair passed off 
pleasantly. The Philadelphia guests, during their 
stay, were waited upon by many of our most prom- 
inent ciiizens, aid expressed themselves highly de- 
liiihted with their reception and entertainment. 
They return home to- day, heaving with them the 
best wishes of their loyal friends in this city, whoee 
hearts beat in unison with theirs and whose hands 
ere ever ready to join with theirs in upholding the 
Union and crushing out this wicked and caubelees 
Kebetbon. 



A NORTHERN TRIBUTE TO SOUTHERN LOYALTY. 
RESOLUTIONS 

Offered by Francis Lieber, and seconded by C. E. 
Detmold, concerning the dcjnise of Jajhes L. 
Petigru, of South Carolina, and unanimously 
approved at the Great Mass Meeting of the 
Loyal National League and other loyal citi- 
zens, on occasion of the Sumter Anniversary, 
in New York, April Uth, 1863: 
"We, loyal citizens, assembled in Union Square, 
New York, on the 11th day of April, 186.3, have 
heard with deep sorrow that James Louis Peti- 
gru, of Charleston, South Carolina, has departed 
from this life ; therefore. 

Resolved, That we will ever cherish the spot- 
less name of this loyal citizen, who has set us a 
bright example of unwavering fidelity and forti- 
tude in adhering to his country and her sacred 
cause, with a large mind untainted by narrow 
state pride, free from sectional prejudice, and 
proof against the errors peculiar to bis native 
portion of the country. 

Jiesolved, That, born and educated in South 
Carolina; gifted with talents which entitled hira 
to th« highest positions coveted by ambition ; 



acknowledged by all to be the greatest jurist and 
counsellor in his whole State ; of a genial as well 
as an aspiring temper, fitted to enjoy the ameni- 
ties of friendship and inspiriting popularity ; 
aware that his interests were not lying on tbe 
side he had chosen ; conscious that he wanted but 
a sphere of action to be a statesman, — he never- 
theless preferred to give up every advantage and 
tie, and to remain, from early manhood to a ripe 
old age, a patriot of devoted rectitude and polit- 
ical simplicity. 

Jiesolved, That in the unhappy period of nulli- 
fication James Louis Petigru was the acknowl- 
edged leader of the Union men in Charleston j 
and now, in this dire civil war, when bis im- 
passioned State pronounced herself by an over- 
whelming declaration against the country, he 
alone of all prominent citizens remained faithful 
and unmoved to the last moment of his life, as a 
lonely rock in tbe midst of an angry sea is lashed 
in vain by the frenzied turmoil of storm and 
wave. 



LETTER FROM GEN. HALLECK, GENERAL-IN- 
CHIEF OF THE AMERICAN ARMIES. 

Headquarters of the Army, ) 

Washington, April 5tb, 1863. J 
James A. Roosevelt, 

Secretary of the League, N. Y. 
Sir : — I have received your invitation to attend 
a mass meeting of the Loyal National League in 
New York, on the 11th inst., and I regret that 
my official duties will prevent me from being 
present. I, however, fully approve of the object 
of the meeting, ns set forth in your circular. 

I think no man who has carefully observed the 
course of events in the rebel States, since the 
commencement of this war, can now hope for 
any other peace than that which is imposed by the 
bayonet. The loyal States must conquer this 
rebellion, or it will conquer them. Loyal men of 
all parties, and of all shades of political opinion, 
must unite in supporting the government of our 
fathers, or consent to see the glory and integrity 
of this great nation utterly destroyed by rebels 
and traitors. This rebellion cannot be put down 
by peaceful measures. Those who pretend to 
think so are either madmen or traitors in dis- 
guise. We must either conquer or submit to 
terms dictated by the Southern oligarcliy. There 
is no other alternative. The great North and 
West, with their vastly superior numbers and 
means, can conquer, if they will act together. 
If, through factions and dissensions, they fail to 
do this, they will stand forever disgraced in the 
opinion of the world, and will transmit that dis- 
grace to their posterity. 

We have already made immense progress in 
this war — a greater progress than was ever before 
made under similar circumstances. Our armies 
are still advancing, and, if sustained by the 
voicesof tbe patriotic millions at home, they will, 
ere long, crusli the rebellion in the Soutii, and 
then place their heels upon the heads of sneaking^ 
traitors in the North. 

Very respectfully. 

Your obedient serv't, 
H. W. HALLECK, 
GenerAl-iu-Chi«C 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



I ISr D E X 012 196 752 2 % 

TO THIS BRIEF REPORT OF I'ROrEEDIXG^;. 



(roi- a full Report of Proceeaiii.Ers, Si)eeche.s, Letters, &0., see aiiotlier edilion.) 

Resolutions expressive of the views of the meeting^,.^ -' 

Letters from Gen. Scott, Oen, Hooker, and Gov. Toilil ,"- 

Speeeli of Hon. Montgomery Bhiir, Postmaster-Geuernl '■'■ 

Speech of Hon. William Y>. Kelley, of Philadelphia, ■' 

Address by Dr. Francis Lieber, '' 

Letter to .Tohii Bright, Richard Cobden, and other friends in Great Lrilain . 1(» 

Letter to Count Gasparin and other friends of America in France 12 

Speech of Gov. Morton, of Indiana 14 

Remarks of General Hamilton, of Texas 1 ^ 

Remarks of Hon. .James M. Scovel, of t)ie New Jersey Legislature is 

Remarks of Rev. .1. T. Duryea 1 "^ 

Speech of Dr. Francis Lieber ^^ 

Remarks of Benson J. Lossing, Esq., '^^ 

Speech of Major-Geil. Sigel ^ ^ 

Remarks of Dr. Rudolph Dulon ^ ^ 

Speech of Hon. Schuylei- Colfax, M. ('., from Indiana 1^ 

Speech of Gov. Pierpont, of Virginia '' ■' 

Remarks of Mr. Weill and Dr. Foersch -'• 

Speech of Major-Gen. Fremont -'^ 

Speech of Hon. Roscoe Conkling, - ^ 

National Odes. l)y Alfred B. Street, and George II. Boker, E'^qs., ■^■> 

Remarks of Hon. Mr. Julian, of Indiana -•' 

Remarks of Mr. W. J. A. Fuller, "-'' 

Letter from Major-Gen. Dix, -'^ 

Speech of Hon. Daniel S. Dickinson ....-•' 

Speech of Hon. Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, -" 

Speech of (iov. Nye, of Nevada, -* 

Remarks of John ('. Montgomery, Esq., -^ 

Remarks of Mr. G. W. Eliot, of London -^ 

Remarks of Col. Nugent, of the fivith -^ 

Speech of David Dudley Field, Esq., -'^ 

Speech of George William Curtis, Esq., -• 

Speech of S. B. Chittenden, Esq., ' ' 

Remarks of Mr. Lambert, of Ireland ' ' 

Speech of Hon. James A. Briggs J 

Speech of Theodore Tilton, Esq , '^^ 

Remarks of Thomas Parsons, Esq., of St. Louis, '^ 

Gen. Crawford, one of the defenders of Fort Sumter, ■^■- 

Delegation from the Loyal League of Philadelphia ■'- 

Remarks of D. H. Brewster, Charles Gibbons, and Henry C. Carey, Esqs., and oth.-rs, ^ 

of Philadelphia, 

A Northern Tribute to Southern Loyalty— Dr. Lieb.M-s Resolutions concerning the 

death of James L. Petigru, of South Carolina 32 

Letter from Major-Gen. Halleck 



